M.2 enclosure recommendations for Mac Studio

[khollister]

These numbers sound very promising khollister, thank you! What is that 3TB limit you mentioned in your previous post? I've just received two OWC 1M2 enclosures and two 4TB Samsung 990 Pro - planning to run both off the Mac Studio Max rear ports. Are there documented issues running without external power in such a config?

The boxes are still sealed as I plan to build the drives later this week. I can exchange for a powered enclosure if needed, e.g the Sonnet Echo Dual NVMe, but would much prefer these 1M2s. I will have 4TB internal + 8TB external SSD for production, plus 12TB HDD archive/backup volumes in a USB 3.2 enclosure.

Best,
Sky

There are numerous reports of only being able to run 3 bus-powered Thunderbolt (not 3 terabyte) drives from the Studio due to a power limitation. It is not clear if that limit also applies to USB4 devices. It is pretty clear that USB3 10Gbs are NOT subject to this, e.g. you can run 3 thunderbolt drives and additional USB3 drives.

You will be fine with your 2 4TB NVMe USB4 drives.

Sorry for the confusion - 3TB=3 terabytes, 3 TB=3 thunderbolt

BTW, I assume you already know this, but on a Studio MAX the 2 front USB-C ports are only USB3, not TB/USB4. I recall a mention somewhere that the Max variants may be limited to 2 thunderbolt bus-powered drives instead of 3 but I'm not certain. I am currently testing 2 1M2 drives (one 8TB, one 4TB) on my M1Max MBP and everything is fine, so you will be fine regardless.

 

[HCMarkus]

Data Point: I have run into USB/Thunderbolt power limitations on my M1 Studio Ultra, resolved by using a powered USB hub to connect external USB drives, including AC-powered 3.5" spinners. It was surprising to me that the 3.5" drives (Seagate) apparently pull power from their USB ports despite each having its own individual AC wall wart.

Prior to adding the powered hub for the external hard drives, I was seeing sporadic failure to mount on boot by my two Thunderbolt-connected (buss powered) Envoy Express NVMe SSDs.

 

[khollister]

Data Point: I have run into USB/Thunderbolt power limitations on my M1 Studio Ultra, resolved by using a powered USB hub to connect external USB drives, including AC-powered 3.5" spinners. It was surprising to me that the 3.5" drives (Seagate) apparently pull power from their USB ports despite each having its own individual AC wall wart.

Prior to adding the powered hub for the external hard drives, I was seeing sporadic failure to mount on boot by my two Thunderbolt-connected (buss powered) Envoy Express NVMe SSDs.

Yeah, I just disconnected my OWC TB4 hub (ProDisplay XDR, Apollo X8 and powered USB3 hub) and tried plugging an Envoy SX TB drive into the 3rd port on my M1Max MBP - no bueno, got the too much power message.

Surprising you are only getting 2 TB drives to work with self powered USB HDD's attached. Other posts here clearly stated they had 3 TB drives in addition to USB3 SSD's. If I have similar results with my 3rd USB4 drive and my M2Ultra Studio, I have the TB hub I can use. I will know more tomorrow. I recall the Max versions supported fewer bus-powered drives than the Ultra though, so your experience is surprising.

I was able to get 2 USB4 SSD's and a Samsung USB3 T5 SSD connected successfully and all 3 drives survived reboot on the MBP.

I will have 3 1M2 USB4 drives, a couple Envoy SX TB3 drives, several USB3 T5 SSD's, my Apollo TB# and the Apple Pro Display to try various combinations.

 

[Skymuse]

Thank you khollister And HCMarkus for your updates. Yes, I misread "3 TB" to mean terrabytes , so I just need to address this maximum power issue.

I need to either test and possibly add a hub, or start over with a different type of enclosure. My goal is to avoid having lots of boxes on my desk; all-in-one alternatives like Trebleet Quad and Sonnet Echo Dual solve this but have their own tradeoffs.

Thinking aloud, the OWC Thunderbolt Hub can create a storage subsystem - 2x powered 1M2, 1x TB4 port for future expansion, and 1x USB 3.2 port to daisy-chain my HDD enclosure. CalDigit Element Hub has more ports and also costs more money. HCmarkus, what type of hub are you using with your Studio Ultra?

Sky

 

[HCMarkus]

Surprising you are only getting 2 TB drives to work with self powered USB HDD's attached

for clarity: I haven't tried to run more than Two Thunderbolt drives.

 

[khollister]

Thank you khollister And HCMarkus for your updates. Yes, I misread "3 TB" to mean terrabytes , so I just need to address this maximum power issue.

I need to either test and possibly add a hub, or start over with a different type of enclosure. My goal is to avoid having lots of boxes on my desk; all-in-one alternatives like Trebleet Quad and Sonnet Echo Dual solve this but have their own tradeoffs.

Thinking aloud, the OWC Thunderbolt Hub can create a storage subsystem - 2x powered 1M2, 1x TB4 port for future expansion, and 1x USB 3.2 port to daisy-chain my HDD enclosure. CalDigit Element Hub has more ports and also costs more money. HCmarkus, what type of hub are you using with your Studio Ultra?

Sky

Don't panic just yet - I believe USB4 devices are a little more power efficient than TB. You will perfectly fine with 2 (I'm running 2 on my M1Max MBP as we speak).

Be careful with hubs (USB or TB4) and SSD devices. A single TB3/4 or USB4 NVMe can saturate a TB4 bus, so if you are expecting to access multiple drives simultaneously off of a hub, you will take a large performance hit. What is OK is to run 2 or 3 USB3 SSD's (like Samsung T5's) off of a TB4 hub since there is plenty of bandwidth for that. Likewise running multiple USB3 10Gbps drives off of a powered USB3 hub will choke if they are all accessed simultaneously.

The same problem exists with multiple drive USB4 or TB3 enclosures. Your 4 slot powered NVMe TB3 chassis has only 1 PCIe lane per blade because they assume you are using RAID. TB only has about 2800 MBs bandwidth for data, so a single PCIe3 or PCIe4 blade more than saturates that bus. If you want multiple drives as JBOD on a single bus, you might as well just use SATA SSD's. RAID is not recommended for sample streaming.

This is a primary reason I went with 8TB blades (one I have and the other is inbound from Amazon) instead of a bunch of 4TB ones. While a bunch of 4TB SSD's would be cheaper (and theoretically faster due to more busses), you can't hang 6 full bandwidth bus-powered drives off even a Studio Ultra due to power constraints (well I guess you could use 3 TB4 hubs but that's a lot of clutter).

Markus had issues with HDD's but I think a couple of USB4 drives and a couple USB3 SSD's would likely be OK (certainly 2xUSB4 + 1 USB3 works fine on my M1 Max but I'm out of TB ports at that point so I can't test any further until my Studio arrives tomorrow.

 

[khollister]

New Mac Pro and New M2 Ultra Mac Studio!!! (Yeah!)

Actually, my issue arose when I added a third Seagate AC-powered external 14TB HD to my array of backup drives. Solved by putting it on a powered USB Hub. It's a bit of a mystery. Is that Seagate a spinning HD...like a 7200RPM one?

vi-control.net

This is why I suspect you can get more bus-powered USB4 drives connected than TB3.

 

[Skymuse]

Don't panic just yet - I believe USB4 devices are a little more power efficient than TB. You will perfectly fine with 2 (I'm running 2 on my M1Max MBP as we speak).

Be careful with hubs (USB or TB4) and SSD devices. A single TB3/4 or USB4 NVMe can saturate a TB4 bus, so if you are expecting to access multiple drives simultaneously off of a hub, you will take a large performance hit. What is OK is to run 2 or 3 USB3 SSD's (like Samsung T5's) off of a TB4 hub since there is plenty of bandwidth for that. Likewise running multiple USB3 10Gbps drives off of a powered USB3 hub will choke if they are all accessed simultaneously.

The same problem exists with multiple drive USB4 or TB3 enclosures. Your 4 slot powered NVMe TB3 chassis has only 1 PCIe lane per blade because they assume you are using RAID. TB only has about 2800 MBs bandwidth for data, so a single PCIe3 or PCIe4 blade more than saturates that bus. If you want multiple drives as JBOD on a single bus, you might as well just use SATA SSD's. RAID is not recommended for sample streaming.

This is a primary reason I went with 8TB blades (one I have and the other is inbound from Amazon) instead of a bunch of 4TB ones. While a bunch of 4TB SSD's would be cheaper (and theoretically faster due to more busses), you can't hang 6 full bandwidth bus-powered drives off even a Studio Ultra due to power constraints (well I guess you could use 3 TB4 hubs but that's a lot of clutter).

Markus had issues with HDD's but I think a couple of USB4 drives and a couple USB3 SSD's would likely be OK (certainly 2xUSB4 + 1 USB3 works fine on my M1 Max but I'm out of TB ports at that point so I can't test any further until my Studio arrives tomorrow.

This sounds very promising. I just did a deep dive into 990 Pro specs and found that Samsung focused on power efficiency versus its previous 980 Pro. For this metric, 990 Pro now sits between WD 850X and the leading Hynix P41; 980 Pro was worse than 850X. So considering both NVMe and USB4 improvements I should be fine. Time to unwrap and test, thanks again.

 

[Pier]

A single TB3/4 or USB4 NVMe can saturate a TB4 bus, so if you are expecting to access multiple drives simultaneously off of a hub, you will take a large performance hit.

This is true but you will only saturate a bus when benchmarking or working with big files (eg: video projects).

When loading audio samples NVMEs will never reach their max speed.

Eg: this NVME doesn't even go above 700MB/s when loading Kontakt samples even though its theoretical max speed is 3500MB/s (review).



Source of the graph

 

[khollister]

This is true but you will only saturate a bus when benchmarking or working with big files (eg: video projects).

When loading audio samples NVMEs will never reach their max speed.

Eg: this NVME doesn't even go above 700MB/s when loading Kontakt samples even though its theoretical max speed is 3500MB/s (review).



Source of the graph

Good point. If I run the random 4K QD64 test in AmorphousDiskMark, the 240K IOPS translates to about 1000 MBs. Forgot about that. Synchron Player and/or OPUS certainly make more use of that than Kontakt, but the drive can only do 1/3 of the bus bandwidth in random mode.

I was in video mode there for a minute

 

[DAWgSTRAW]

PSA - OWC has empty Express 1M2 USB4 enclosures in stock for immediate delivery as of this morning (5/1). I have 2 coming today that were backordered and just ordered a 3rd one. I am moving from my old M1Max MBP with 8TB internal to a Mac Studio M2Ultra with 2TB internal (but 192GB of RAM!).

Studio Ultra will be here Friday and I have an Inland Performance Plus 8TB and a Samsung 990Pro 4TB blade ready to go in the first 2 1M2's. I tried a Satechi USB4 enclosure but have not been thrilled with the thermal capacity. Both blades got to 75-80C+ on writes and 45-51C idle. I also had the Satechi come unlatched and the top separated. I didn't notice it, stepped away for a couple hours and came back to an overtemp warning on the Inland (within 1C of max temp - 88C). Not impressed.

I also have a couple OWC Envoy SX TB drives - plan to experiment to see how many bus powered drives I can use with various combos of USB4 + TB. I know about the 3 TB drive limit, but wonder if USB4 behaves the same. I also have a TB4 hub if needed (used it with MBP but hoping I can jettison it with the studio. My USB-C devices are Apple Pro Display XDR (which hosts my USB2/USB3 stuff), TB Apollo X8 and bus powered drives.

THX 4 hedsup!

 

[jbuhler]

Be careful with hubs (USB or TB4) and SSD devices. A single TB3/4 or USB4 NVMe can saturate a TB4 bus, so if you are expecting to access multiple drives simultaneously off of a hub, you will take a large performance hit.

I’m running 2 OWC Thunderbays daisy chained on a single TB4 Studio Ultra port. One Thunderbay is TB2, the other TB3. I’m finding no issue serving samples off those 8 SSDs, though speeds are what you’d expect, that is, not great. But that only comes into play loading a project. So there may be a performance hit, but I’ve not saturated the bus in a way that matters other than project load time.

I also have two 4 TB NVMes running in a dual drive TB3 enclosure, and that’s much faster and where I currently house my most used libraries. I may pick up one of these Express 1M2 USB4 enclosures and see if I can get improvement on load times.

 

[JeffvR]

Don't panic just yet - I believe USB4 devices are a little more power efficient than TB. You will perfectly fine with 2 (I'm running 2 on my M1Max MBP as we speak).

Be careful with hubs (USB or TB4) and SSD devices. A single TB3/4 or USB4 NVMe can saturate a TB4 bus, so if you are expecting to access multiple drives simultaneously off of a hub, you will take a large performance hit. What is OK is to run 2 or 3 USB3 SSD's (like Samsung T5's) off of a TB4 hub since there is plenty of bandwidth for that. Likewise running multiple USB3 10Gbps drives off of a powered USB3 hub will choke if they are all accessed simultaneously.

The same problem exists with multiple drive USB4 or TB3 enclosures. Your 4 slot powered NVMe TB3 chassis has only 1 PCIe lane per blade because they assume you are using RAID. TB only has about 2800 MBs bandwidth for data, so a single PCIe3 or PCIe4 blade more than saturates that bus. If you want multiple drives as JBOD on a single bus, you might as well just use SATA SSD's. RAID is not recommended for sample streaming.

This is a primary reason I went with 8TB blades (one I have and the other is inbound from Amazon) instead of a bunch of 4TB ones. While a bunch of 4TB SSD's would be cheaper (and theoretically faster due to more busses), you can't hang 6 full bandwidth bus-powered drives off even a Studio Ultra due to power constraints (well I guess you could use 3 TB4 hubs but that's a lot of clutter).

Markus had issues with HDD's but I think a couple of USB4 drives and a couple USB3 SSD's would likely be OK (certainly 2xUSB4 + 1 USB3 works fine on my M1 Max but I'm out of TB ports at that point so I can't test any further until my Studio arrives tomorrow.

Which 8TB drive are you using?
Thinking about moving to a laptop setup only. Searching for a good setup without too many drives.

 

[khollister]

Which 8TB drive are you using?
Thinking about moving to a laptop setup only. Searching for a good setup without too many drives.

The Inland Performance Plus. The caching seems to choke badly on sustained writes over about 500GB (mores than a Samsung 990 Pro 4TB I also have) but for our use cases, it's not an issue. Idle temp is 46C in the OWC 1M2 enclosure, gets to about 75-77C during sustained writes (talking at least hundreds of GB) and got to 65C with sustained reads on a 6 hour backup job last night (not reading at full speed as target was a HDD at about 250 MBs.

The 1M2 is warm to very warm but not uncomfortable to pick up or hold for several seconds due to the large radiating surface area. In contrast the Satechi I tried was hot and very uncomfortable to hold for more than a couple seconds. Internal temps were several degrees higher on heavy sustained use as well.

The 1M2's are quite attractive, very Mac looking. I just wish they were a space gray or space black color rather than silver. I labeled them using 6mm Brother P-Touch tape ...

 

[khollister]

OK got the Studio Ultra operational. First configuration was Pro Display XDR, Apollo X8, 2 OWC Express 1M2's (1 4TB, 1 8TB) and 1 Samsung T5 SSD (USB3) directly connected to the Studio ports - all good.

I then added an OWC Envoy Pro SX TB3 drive (4TB) - still good.

I then used my Caldigit Element TB4 hub and connected the monitor and Apollo through the downstream TB4 ports on the hub and tried 2 x 1M2's, and 2 x Envoy Pro SX's - no bueno, got the "too much power" warning immediately.

I disconnected the 2 TB3 drives and connected 2 USB3 SSD's (T5 and a T7) - all good.

I was hoping to try 3 USB4 drives + 1 TB3 but the 2nd 8TB blade is delayed in shipping so that will have to wait until next week :(

Next I tried all 3 of my Envoy Pro SX TB3 drives (1x4TB, 2x2TB) plus the T5 & T7 - all good.

And finally, 3 x thunderbolt + 1 USB4 + 1 USB3 - Everything mounted with no power warning!!

Going to try several reboot cycles with the last "mega config" to see if everything remounts correctly.

The moral seems to be that the USB4 drives are a lot more power friendly than the thunderbolt devices. My guess is 4 or even 5 USB4 devices would work fine. However I don't have enough USB4 drives to test that.

 

[Nick Batzdorf]

I personally wouldn't even attempt to use anything bus-powered on a USB hub that isn't powered.

My Acasis enclosure is connected directly to the Mac Studio Max, and it's fine. But you don't know what's going on with a hub.

 

[khollister]

So 2xTB+2xUSB4 or 3xTB+1xUSB4 doesn't survive reboot without 1 random drive failing to mount. However 2xUSB4+1xTB3+2xUSB3 seems to work fine.

Enough of this nonsense - back to installing software on the Studio and cleaning up the drive clutter. Not like all this crap will be connected at once anyway.

 

[khollister]

I personally wouldn't even attempt to use anything bus-powered on a USB hub that isn't powered.

My Acasis enclosure is connected directly to the Mac Studio Max, and it's fine. But you don't know what's going on with a hub.

The hub here is a powered Caldigit thunderbolt 4 hub, Nick.

 

[Nick Batzdorf]

The hub here is a powered Caldigit thunderbolt 4 hub, Nick.

Oh, I wasn't responding to any posts, I was just saying that in general.

 

[Skymuse]

I'm up and running with dual OWC 1M2 + 4TB Samsung 990 Pro. Installation was painless and product quality seems very good. Both are testing ~3100MBPS read/write as spec'd. I've confirmed with OWC that the 1M2 enclosure cannot provide heat data, so I may buy an inexpensive measurement device for this. Assuming no further expansion, this is a pretty clutter-free installation. Cable management is next.

Here's something I can share. The two pads in the photo (purple under the Mac and clear under the drives) are Lamson HotSpot Silicone Trivets, 7" x 7" and about $7 each. They are nice because they provide both anti-skid and heat insulation between devices, in a Mini / Studio form factor.

Thanks again HCMarkus, khollister and others for your guidance in this thread, much appreciated.