Fast, portable 1 TB SSD?
 

I need a fast, portable 1 TB SSD for editing in Final Cut X. MacBook Pro 2016.

I see the Samsung T5 and the OWC offerings. What are people using in the real world? Anything to recommend or to avoid?

--Darin

Re: Fast, portable 1 TB SSD?
 

I have been using a 1TB Samsung T3 for several months and it's great (the T5 was not available when I got it). I have it setup as a boot drive with Sierra on my 2012 2.6ghz quad core i7 Mac Mini. The Mini has an Apple 256gb internal SSD but I still have Mountain Lion on it for the times I want to use my expensive legacy software.

I've also had two of the 500gb T3 drives for about a year and they are the same speed. Here's how the 1TB drive clocks in the Blackmagic app.

Re: Fast, portable 1 TB SSD?
 

That seems quite slow for an SSD over Thunderbolt 3. Are you perhaps connecting to USB-C instead of a T3 connection? They are unfortunately the same physical connector.

I'm getting your posted speeds on a LaCie 2-drive RAID 0 setup (with spinning HDs). Around 400 MB/s reads and writes.

The internal SSD of an iMac Pro gives a whopping 3,000 MB/s. I would expect external SSDs (single unit; non-striped) to give at least 1,300 MB/s.

EDIT: I no longer rely on BlackMagic's (or Avid's) utility. It definitely doesn't know how to handle RAID 10. And it gets tripped up by disk caching on occasion. So maybe try some larger file copies and see if the speed is actually higher than reported.

Re: Fast, portable 1 TB SSD?
 

"T3" is the name of the product, it does not mean "Thunderbolt 3". I don't think Apple even sold any computers with Thunderbolt 3 in 2016 when this SSD was introduced. https://www.pcworld.com/article/3034...idly-fast.html

And if you read my post again, you'll see that I use it on a 2012 quad core Mac Mini Server which definitely doesn't have Thunderbolt 3. :)

I'm sorry, since the Samsung T3 was such a popular product I just assumed everyone knew that it was a USB 3.0 device, I should have been more specific. It's tiny, inexpensive and bus-powered, certainly not the same product category as a RAID.

Re: Fast, portable 1 TB SSD?
 

Thanks for the correction; I did indeed assume that T3 meant Thunderbolt 3.

Re: Fast, portable 1 TB SSD?
 

The Atom SSD and Atom RAID SSD models from Glyph are pretty awesome. Very portable and VERY fast! They have a USB-C connection which is compatible with Thunderbolt 3 also.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera