Update: I'm putting my recommendation for the Crucial P3 Plus on temporary hold. (It's sold out at Best Buy, by the way, but available elsewhere for the same price.)
The hold is pending the arrival of the Acasis enclosure I ordered. While this is their latest model, the one Acasis told me is the right one to pair with the Crucial P3, I've read reports from people saying that they only get 500 MB/S write from this particular drive.
Were they using an older model enclosure? I don't know, but I do know that the temporary USB 3.1 gen 2 one I got from Amazon (free - they will send things to some people to get reviews) is reading at almost 1000 MB/S, it's also writing at 500.
Hopefully it will work better in the Acasis, or I'm returning both.
The P3 is a QLC drive with no DRAM cache. Read speeds should be better in the Acasis, but write speeds will be limited due to the nature of how these specific types of SSDs function.
Most manufacturers have three SSD lines:
The budget line like the P3, or Samsung QVO, is QLC* with no cache. Slowest speeds, significantly slower write speeds, lowest TBW*, lowest cost per GB (sometimes by a large margin).
The midgrade line like the P5, or Samsung EVO, is typically TLC and may have cache. Better read speeds, significantly better write speeds, better TBW, higher cost per GB.
And the high-grade line like the Samsung Pro, is typically MLC and will almost always have cache. Highest speeds, highest TBW, highest cost per GB.
The speed difference between the midgrade and high-grade lines usually is not all that much. Often, read speeds will be identical and write speeds will get a small bump.
For an SSD that will purely be used for samples, QLC drives are often fine. This use case is 99% reads, the only time data is written is when installing a new library or updating a library. So the slower write speeds doesn't matter all that much. But for mixed use like what you want, you definitely want to go with a TLC or MLC model.
*QLC = Quad level cell. Four distinct bit values can be stored in one physical cell on the SSD. This allows more data to be stored, at the cost of longevity and performance, especially write performance. When one cell of a QLC SSD is written to, the existing 4 bits need to be copied to an empty cell, then the original cell is erased, then all 4 bits are re-written with one of them updated with the new data.
TLC = Triple-level cell. Three distinct bit values can be stored in one physical cell. Less writes are required to update one bit compared to QLC because there is one less bit stored in each cell.
MLC = Multi-level cell. Two distinct bits per cell. Technically TLC and QLC are also multi-level. But MLC SSDs with two bits per cell were the first to be developed, were called MLC, and the name stuck instead of being changed to DLC / dual-level cell.
*TBW = Terabytes written. It is a measure of the SSDs expected endurance. SSDs degrade whenever they are written to. Writing the same amount of data to a QLC model will require more physical writes than a TLC or MLC model due to how they function, so they have the lowest endurance.
