You can find Thunderbolt enclosures for less than $100US - check Newegg for the Orico or WavLink brands, Sabrent on Amazon, or this one at OWC. Whether you will notice either of the above in practice is debatable - USB-C provides enough bandwidth, even with the rather slow USB performance on Apple Silicon, to do just about anything you'd want to do with a sample drive. There are a couple considerations when deciding between USB-C enclosures and Thunderbolt:ġ) Thunderbolt will provide better performance with just about any current NVMe drive, since even USB 3.2 Gen 2 won't give enough bandwidth for even a relatively slow driveĢ) USB-C drives perform a bit worse on Apple Silicon Macs than on Intel Macs, which will accentuate the performance difference vs Thunderbolt

You should generally be able to get drives for <$100US/TB. I've had good luck keeping an eye out for good prices on Crucial or Intel NVMe drives for external use - most recent drives are more than capable of hitting the Thunderbolt 3 & 4 data cap (~2.8GBps).

The drive inside it (Western Digital SN550) is also DRAM-less, which could result in more tear & wear on the memory cells.ĭo you have any suggestions or are happy with the SSD you are currently using for your Macbooks? It would be helpful to know what your experience & thoughts are.The difference in NVMe prices is largely down to name brand - Samsung is a big name in the space, and commands a premium, as do some extreme performance lines from other brands (you shouldn't bother with those for external use, regardless). So far, the Sandisk Extreme v2 1TB would meet my requirements (water & dust resistant, rugged exterior, fast enough, small enough to be portable) but I am concerned about users reporting very high temperatures and don't know how that would affect the longevity of the SSD. I've considered going the DIY route and get an enclosure + SSD, but I can't seem to find water-resistant, dust-resistant, rugged and metallic enclosures from reliable brands. 1 Apple Computer Storage Interface Mac mini G4/1.25 Ultra ATA/100 Mac mini G4/1.42 Ultra ATA/100 Mac mini G4/1.33 Ultra ATA/100 Mac mini G4/1.5 Ultra ATA/100 Mac mini 'Core Solo' 1.5 Serial ATA (1.5 Gb/s) Mac mini 'Core Duo' 1.66 Serial ATA (1.5 Gb/s) Mac mini 'Core Duo' 1.83 Serial ATA (1.5 Gb/s) Mac mini 'Core 2 Duo' 1.83 Serial ATA (1. I'm interested in SSDs that are more likely to have a longer life-span and are reliable, rather than drives with crazy speeds that get hot easily. I need 1TB, durability, longevity and reliability for a maximum of 150 euros (170$). It would mainly be used as storage and occasionally for music production sessions, where I would use it for plug-ins and sample libraries that wouldn't normally fit on the 256GB internal SSD. I've been looking recently for the most suitable portable SSD to go alongside my base Air M1 and would benefit from your expertise and/or experience with external SSDs, to help me make a decision.

Best external ssd for mac mini m1