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How connecting your SSD to a Thunderbolt hub can slow it to a crawl
Last month I reported some worrying results in the performance of some Thunderbolt 3 SSDs connected to Thunderbolt 4 hubs, where their write speeds could fall below 700 MB/s when writes were performed...
View ArticleHow does an Apple silicon Mac mount a Thunderbolt disk?
External storage is the most popular peripheral for Macs, if for no other reason than to keep backups. Each time your Mac starts up, or you connect its external disk, your Mac has to mount that disk...
View ArticleShould you trim external SSDs?
Trim, which isn’t an abbreviation but is often set in capitals, is a command that can be sent to some types of storage including SSDs to tell them to perform housekeeping. About ten years ago, when...
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How to check whether an SSD gets trimmed
We pay a lot for SSDs and expect their performance to reflect our investment. One reason for them writing data very slowly is that they need trimming, to perform the housekeeping necessary to make...
View ArticleLast Week on My Mac: Storage stories
Selecting and buying storage has never been straightforward. In the days long before SSDs, there were plenty of disasters: there were IBM’s ‘Deathstar’ hard disks that crashed and burned with...
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Mints version 1.12 reveals SMART indicators for some SSDs
Over the last few months, we’ve had a lot of discussion about SSDs, assessing their health and likely longevity, and more recently about trimming them, and their performance. While I’ve been working on...
View ArticleWill your new SSD support TRIM and SMART?
While Mints can now tell you whether your expensive new SSD gets trimmed by your Mac when it’s mounted, you really want to know which features are supported by different SSDs before you pay for them....
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How well do USB 3 SSDs work on a Thunderbolt hub?
It has been a little while since I last looked at SSD performance on Thunderbolt 4 hubs. One question that I had left unanswered is whether mixing the devices connected to the same hub across...
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COW and clones: how they save space and SSD wear
APFS was primarily developed for solid-state storage in Macs and Apple’s devices down to the 8 GB on the earliest series of Watch. As a modern file system it has features that cater for SSDs rather...
View ArticleIt’s all about reliability and contingency
As ever, the moment that I point out that a traditional procedure is either unavailable or outmoded on Apple silicon Macs, I’m besieged by cries of “but that’s how I’ve always done it”. So did I for...
View ArticleShopping for a faster external SSD
By now, we should all be thoroughly confused with USB 3.1 Gen 2, 3.2 Gen 2×2, USB4, Thunderbolt 3 and 4. The fact that they can all be connected using a Thunderbolt 4 cable to a USB-C port on your Mac...
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How to evaluate an external SSD
When you’ve finally chosen your new external SSD, whether it comes already assembled or as an enclosure into which you install your own storage, you should evaluate it to check that it does what you...
View ArticleApple silicon: 5 Memory and internal storage
So far in this series explaining how Apple silicon Macs differ from their predecessors, I have concentrated on processors built into their chip. This article looks at how they store data in memory and...
View ArticleKeeping cool: physics
With the Spring here in the northern hemisphere, and the threat of another long hot summer drawing ever closer, now is the time to think about how to ensure your Mac and its peripherals keep cool. In...
View ArticleLast Week on My Mac: Why good external SSDs are faster with Apple silicon
Two two-letter words can cover a multitude of performance sins. Up to almost invariably sets a target that can never be achieved, and one spec’s up to may be very different from another. I’m thinking...
View ArticleShould power affect the speed of external SSDs?
One of the great advantages of using fast external SSDs is that you don’t need a large and expensive enclosure with its own power supply, as they can draw the power they need over the Thunderbolt or...
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Was the Fusion Drive a good idea?
When Apple introduced Fusion Drives back in late 2012, they were an attractive option for many iMacs and Mac minis. At a time when SSDs of 1 TB and greater size were expensive, the Fusion Drive seemed...
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Copy speeds of large and sparse files
I have recently seen reports of very low speeds when copying large files such as virtual machines, in some cases extending to more than a day, even when they should have been sparse files, so requiring...
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What performance should you get from different types of storage?
External storage is invariably sold with ‘up-to’ performance figures. In practice, you’ll seldom realise anything like some write or read speeds claimed. And when it comes to prolonged tasks like that...
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Disk Images: Performance
Over the last few years, the performance of disk images has been keenly debated. In some cases, writing to a disk image proceeds at a snail’s pace, but this has appeared unpredictable. Over two years...
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