bought one couple months ago, run virtual machines off it, on 1 older win11 pc had to go into win update advance options and the intel thunderbolt driver was there, new win 11 it just worked, my box says thunderbolt or usb 3.2 x2 (25% of max speed) - not usb 4, the WD Dashboard app is good to check its config/update/interface/speed info ...
I have this on my M2 Max Studio with 1TB memory... I have 4TB Sandisk. It gets speeds like you reflect, about half that of the internal memory. I have all my data on this drive, with my apps on the internal memory. In Photos I have about 1TB of 20MB photos (all on the Sandisk Pro) and can scroll through them as fast as I can move the scroll bar and this external disk has no issue keeping up. So while slower than the internal disk by a lot (per speed test apps), in real world, it is not evident, at least with photos... all access and editing (Pixelmator Pro) is instantaneous.
I have a WD SN850 in an Acasis enclosure and I get basically the exact speeds, unsurprisingly. But this might be good if its compatible with the USB ports on a Panasonic GH7 to record in ProRes RAW and 32-bit floating point audio. I'm sure it wouldn't work because that's what I want to use it for, so of course it wouldn't. :)
It /should/ work in that scenario. I have one of the Acasis enclosures that supposedly has the same cross compatibility - have you tried that on yours?
macOS considers Time Machine to be a low priority background task that always steps aside for whatever you are doing in the foreground, so it’s unlikely that Time Machine would sustain transfer speeds anywhere close to full Thunderbolt speed. If you analyze disk throughput during a Time Machine backup you will probably find it doesn’t reach the theoretical max of most drives it’s used with. I do use common USB-C 10Gb/sec SSDs for Time Machine, and they still might be overkill in terms of speed but they much more affordable than this, and incremental Time Machine backups still finish very quickly.
@@brightboxstudio I agree. Perhaps an extravagant use of a fast SSD. Currently I’m using a 1 TB USB stick on my MacAir, though I have an old mechanical HD with more capacity but could be vulnerable to damage if bumped.
Can I ask what the box says on it for read/write speeds? From what I'm finding Sandisk has changed the internal ssd from the SN750 to the SN850 at some point and I'm trying to figure out how to tell the difference. I watched another video from someone who also had the 2TB model and theirs shows the SN750 when plugged into a windows pc
It just so happens I captured the box during my livestream the other day : th-cam.com/users/live1JMZHxi4YuU - the box lists 3000 megabytes/sec read and 2500 write.
yeah, Windows still doesn't really trust external storage to be solid for disk writes so it defaults to keeping data safer over better performance. Maybe a future patch will allow performance over integrity for thunderbolt connections.
bought one couple months ago, run virtual machines off it, on 1 older win11 pc had to go into win update advance options and the intel thunderbolt driver was there, new win 11 it just worked, my box says thunderbolt or usb 3.2 x2 (25% of max speed) - not usb 4, the WD Dashboard app is good to check its config/update/interface/speed info ...
I have this on my M2 Max Studio with 1TB memory... I have 4TB Sandisk. It gets speeds like you reflect, about half that of the internal memory. I have all my data on this drive, with my apps on the internal memory. In Photos I have about 1TB of 20MB photos (all on the Sandisk Pro) and can scroll through them as fast as I can move the scroll bar and this external disk has no issue keeping up. So while slower than the internal disk by a lot (per speed test apps), in real world, it is not evident, at least with photos... all access and editing (Pixelmator Pro) is instantaneous.
I have a WD SN850 in an Acasis enclosure and I get basically the exact speeds, unsurprisingly. But this might be good if its compatible with the USB ports on a Panasonic GH7 to record in ProRes RAW and 32-bit floating point audio. I'm sure it wouldn't work because that's what I want to use it for, so of course it wouldn't. :)
It /should/ work in that scenario. I have one of the Acasis enclosures that supposedly has the same cross compatibility - have you tried that on yours?
You get the same sustained speeds over long period of time with no thermal drop-offs or cache issues?
Hmm. I currently am using a USB-C memory stick for my Time Machine backup on my M3 MacAir. I will have to consider this.
macOS considers Time Machine to be a low priority background task that always steps aside for whatever you are doing in the foreground, so it’s unlikely that Time Machine would sustain transfer speeds anywhere close to full Thunderbolt speed. If you analyze disk throughput during a Time Machine backup you will probably find it doesn’t reach the theoretical max of most drives it’s used with. I do use common USB-C 10Gb/sec SSDs for Time Machine, and they still might be overkill in terms of speed but they much more affordable than this, and incremental Time Machine backups still finish very quickly.
@@brightboxstudio I agree. Perhaps an extravagant use of a fast SSD. Currently I’m using a 1 TB USB stick on my MacAir, though I have an old mechanical HD with more capacity but could be vulnerable to damage if bumped.
Hey Lon!, Thanks for posting this video
Can I ask what the box says on it for read/write speeds? From what I'm finding Sandisk has changed the internal ssd from the SN750 to the SN850 at some point and I'm trying to figure out how to tell the difference. I watched another video from someone who also had the 2TB model and theirs shows the SN750 when plugged into a windows pc
It just so happens I captured the box during my livestream the other day : th-cam.com/users/live1JMZHxi4YuU - the box lists 3000 megabytes/sec read and 2500 write.
@@LonSeidman Interesting. I have yet to see that on the 2TB models anywhere else. Appreciate the info.
Drive is 3 NOT 4 ...
yeah, Windows still doesn't really trust external storage to be solid for disk writes so it defaults to keeping data safer over better performance. Maybe a future patch will allow performance over integrity for thunderbolt connections.