Not much difference anyway, samsung 980 & WD SN570/580/770 are the best budget dramless NVMe drives. Just keep at least 15-20% space of total drive size in windows free for best performance.
beanstalk_230
Contributor
Thanks for the all the suggestions but wanted to point out a few things as per my experience.
Firstly I ordered Pibox NVME Case so the following will be a review regarding the product as well. Pibox comes with a USB C to C & C to A cable but no thermal pads as mentioned. Transfer speeds that I experienced was as follows for a 80 GB single video file as a test with the provided C to C cable.
WD SN 570 1 TB (Quick Formatted & Empty)
1st 20 GB - Transfer was around 410 MB / Sec Rest 60 GB or so it fell down to a consistent 250 MB / Sec
Crucial P3 4 TB (Quick Formatted but ONLY 530 GB Free out 3.6 TB)
Transfer speed was a consistent 385 MB / Sec without a single dip.
For my use case Crucial P3 + Pibox is a great combo. Currently I do not think I can find a consistent and cheaper combo of a 4 TB external SSD. In future planning to test the same video file transfer with a Samsung T5 USB C to C cable to check if that provides any better speeds. Also WD 570 / Samsung 980 are usually good for most use cases but really falter in cases of huge file size transfers. For such transfers somehow I prefer my 1 TB Crucial MX500 Sata SSD which gives consistent transfer speeds.
Dramless nvme ssd use system ram as a sort of pseudo dram so if dramless ssd are used in usb enclosures that is not possible which results in performance degradation. In WD SN570 case first 20GB was written to the cache while remaining after cache was filled hence slower speeds as no system ram support as pseudo dram. Crucial P3 has dynamic cache which is around one fourth of whatever free space available on the drive so for 530GB free space the P3 cache at that time was around 132GB so the 80GB single file was written completely to the cache only resulting in faster speeds. MX500 is dram sata ssd so its write speeds are independent of usage location (within or outside pc) & even post cache write speeds around 400MB/s.
Check my original use case for which I started this thread. I am using the SABRENT USB 3.2 10Gbps Type C Tool Free Enclosure for M.2 PCIe NVMe and SATA SSDs (EC-SNVE). Quite stable, comes with thermal pads.
It is available on Amazon.in here.
Current seller on amazon seem bad, I assume you bought from a much bigger/reputable seller like appario.
beanstalk_230
Contributor
What are the usual speeds you're getting from this enclosure ?
Thanks for the explanation. Really clears up a lot of doubts and misconceptions.
Hello @guest_999 - I looked up the details as per your comment above. My use case due to which I started this thread.. has been to use a 2TB ssd with the sabrent case I have linked above (i.e. an SSD in an external enclosure).
The reality being that the wd black SN770 2TB.M.2SSD is dramless, should I refrain from this purchase for the combination I have in mind?
FYI found this as well - https://www.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/s/VXcyTMP2Ym.
This quest seems to have no end, lol!
I mentioned this earlier too, NVMe enclosures are nowhere near as stable as sata ones. However you also need to keep in mind that unless the internal drive in whatever system you are copying from/to isn't a NVMe drive then you are not going to see more than 500MB/s speeds anyway on any NVMe enclosure. I say get cheap sata 2TB ssd with dram like MX500 or even dramless sata ssd like BX500 & call it a day. You can also go with pre-built external ssd like crucial x6/x8/samsung t7 etc. Using ssd drives as storage drives only makes sense if you are going to move that drive around a lot & not going to write 100GB+ in one go often.
My need is an M.2 2TB. MX500 & BX500 do not seem to be available in this combination locally (or online). This enclosure based SSD is to serve as a part of my A-B-C backup strategy for my photography projects. I have a 2TB T7 touch which shall copy to this drive.
I agree with what you mention as a degradation with frequent access while copying back/forth with a DRAMless drive but I am unable to find a SATA m.2 with DRAM under 11K (the SN770 is around 11.5K).
Any other options you could suggest (SATA / NVMe with DRAM)?
Chinmoy392
Apprentice
beanstalk_230
Contributor
1000.
You could try out the option I went ahead with a 4TB P3 at the same cost of a 2TB 990 Pro. Anyways as suggested above you’d be limited with 500 mb/s barrier on external cases even with a Gen 5 ssd. Pl correct me if I’m incorrect.
For your usage SN770 will work just fine because the T7 you will be copying from is itself limited to around 900MB/s. If you still want dram nvme then you can take a look at here:
Samsung New open box SSDs
Got 2 Disks from @Ankit Manchanda - very fast processing and delivery. Thank you.
techenclave.com
Can you please share the cost for 4TB P3 you incurred? Also which model Enclosure you bought?
beanstalk_230
Contributor
beanstalk_230
Contributor
+ Card Discounts
I can see 5% coupon on link & coupled with 5% amazonpay card discount that's effectively 10% discount.
@Ckhurana
Buy Crucial P3 4TB M.2 NVMe Internal SSD - Computech Store
Impressive read/ write speeds up to 3500/3000MB/s Spacious storage up to 4TB Solid Gen3 performance. Micron Advanced 3D NAND. NVMe PCIe 3.0 M.2 (2280). Performs up to 45% better than the previous generation⁴ Dynamic write acceleration. Multistep data integrity algorithm.
computechstore.in
Amazon has much better delivery & after sales support for just a few hundred more & if you can get amazonpay card then amazon link is even cheaper.How does this look?Buy Crucial P3 4TB M.2 NVMe Internal SSD - Computech Store
Impressive read/ write speeds up to 3500/3000MB/s Spacious storage up to 4TB Solid Gen3 performance. Micron Advanced 3D NAND. NVMe PCIe 3.0 M.2 (2280). Performs up to 45% better than the previous generation⁴ Dynamic write acceleration. Multistep data integrity algorithm.