Resolved Looking for advice regarding external SSD for 2019 MacBook Air

[revmacian]

Now that I have my MacBook Air (2019), I'm looking around for a portable external SSD. The external storage will be used for files that I want to keep but don't need access to on a daily basis.

The two models I've been looking at are:
* Samsung T5 Portable SSD
* SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD

Desired features:
* easily fit into a pocket
* USB-C connection
* 1TB range (will likely last years for my use)
* wear leveling features (is this standard on SSD's?)

Anyone here have experience with the above two products? Are there other devices I should be considering?

 

[satcomer]

Both Drive for USC are good! I would go one price deals and sizes your willing to buy them!

 

[Clix Pix]

I have been using Samsung's external SSD series for several years now and I wholeheartedly recommend the T5! Fast, small and very portable, and definitely fits in a pocket or small compartment in a bag, it comes with both a USB-C to USB-A cable and a USB-C-to USB-C cable. This was wonderful for me when making the transition from an older machine to Apple's current offerings, so transferring data from an older machine to a new one was not at all a problem.

Samsung T5s come in several capacities ranging from 256 GB to 2 TB..... Prices have dropped significantly on these things since the T5 first arrived on the horizon, too.

The T5 is easy to set up with a Mac. Just plug the thing in and go to Disk Utility and format it to APFS..... After that, start putting whatever data you want on the drive.

I have never used the Sandisk Extreme, so can't offer any opinions on that. I have also used the G-Drive rugged portable SSD (not sure if that's the exact name, but close to it).....and it, too, works well. The only thing I don't like about it is that the cables, both the USB-C to USB-C and the USB-C to USB-A are very short, which may be inconvenient in some situations.

I have no idea about what you mean by "wear leveling features" -- ??? You talking about "trimming?" In any event, I have been using Samsung's external SSDs since their first T1 that came out a few years ago and have never experienced any problems, for what that is worth....

 

[revmacian]

I have been using Samsung's external SSD series for several years now and I wholeheartedly recommend the T5! Fast, small and very portable, and definitely fits in a pocket or small compartment in a bag, it comes with both a USB-C to USB-A cable and a USB-C-to USB-C cable. This was wonderful for me when making the transition from an older machine to Apple's current offerings, so transferring data from an older machine to a new one was not at all a problem.

Samsung T5s come in several capacities ranging from 256 GB to 2 TB..... Prices have dropped significantly on these things since the T5 first arrived on the horizon, too.

The T5 is easy to set up with a Mac. Just plug the thing in and go to Disk Utility and format it to APFS..... After that, start putting whatever data you want on the drive.

I have never used the Sandisk Extreme, so can't offer any opinions on that. I have also used the G-Drive rugged portable SSD (not sure if that's the exact name, but close to it).....and it, too, works well. The only thing I don't like about it is that the cables, both the USB-C to USB-C and the USB-C to USB-A are very short, which may be inconvenient in some situations.

I have no idea about what you mean by "wear leveling features" -- ??? You talking about "trimming?" In any event, I have been using Samsung's external SSDs since their first T1 that came out a few years ago and have never experienced any problems, for what that is worth....

Wear leveling. Flash memory media have individually erasable segments, each of which can be put through a limited number of erase cycles before becoming unreliable. Wear leveling attempts to work around these limitations by arranging data so that erasures and re-writes are distributed evenly across the medium. In this way, no single erase block prematurely fails due to a high concentration of write cycles.

Thank you very much for the info. The more I read the more it sounds like the T5 is the way to go.

 

[Clix Pix]

I love my T5s -- I have several of them, which I use for current backups and supplementary purposes for my photo files. Thank you for the explanation about "wear leveling," as that is a term that was definitely unfamiliar to me! Makes sense now.

 

[revmacian]

I love my T5s -- I have several of them, which I use for current backups and supplementary purposes for my photo files. Thank you for the explanation about "wear leveling," as that is a term that was definitely unfamiliar to me! Makes sense now.

Yeah, I think I'll buy a couple of the T5s and use one for backups (kept at home) and throw one into my backpack for file transfers when needed. The drives are small and light.. perfect!

 

[Clix Pix]

They are ideal! I have a backup set at home, plus a pair of duplicate backup sets. I stash one set in my safe deposit box at my nearby bank, and each month swap out drives, bring the one set home and update it while the freshly updated set is already safe in the bank. Works for me! I also have a 500 GB T5 that I keep in my travel kit so that when I'm on a trip where I'll be accumulating documents or taking photos, I'll be able to immediately back them up from the laptop to the T5, ready to be transferred to the main computer once I am home again. This really works out well.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:
You could also put together a USB3.1 gen2 drive.
See this thread:

Do it yourself USB3.1 gen2 drive

Having bought a 2018 Mini a few months' back, I was looking for an external drive that offered higher performance than what is achieved with USB3 external SSDs. A USB3 SSD will generally yield reads in the 420-430mbps range, with writes usually 300-380mbps (writes vary considerably depending on...

forums.macrumors.com

This will give you 2x the speed of a "regular" USB3 drive.

 

[revmacian]

OP:
You could also put together a USB3.1 gen2 drive.
See this thread:

Do it yourself USB3.1 gen2 drive

Having bought a 2018 Mini a few months' back, I was looking for an external drive that offered higher performance than what is achieved with USB3 external SSDs. A USB3 SSD will generally yield reads in the 420-430mbps range, with writes usually 300-380mbps (writes vary considerably depending on...

forums.macrumors.com

This will give you 2x the speed of a "regular" USB3 drive.

Wow, I had no idea I could build my own external SSD small enough to fit into a pocket. Thank you! Definitely going onto my project list.

 

[balaplus]

Does T5 not have an issue with Catalina? Has this been resolved?

 

[revmacian]

Does T5 not have an issue with Catalina? Has this been resolved?

I wasn't aware of any issues with the Samsung T5 and Catalina. It is an external SSD and should have the ability to be formatted to a macOS-compatible file system (possibly a bad assumption?). Can you explain more about the issue you've mentioned?

 

[BigMcGuire]

https://binaryfruit.com/drivedx — I use this to get the Health data of my external SSDs and internal SSD. My work donated a handful of SSDs and used this to find the one with the least writes to keep.

I too am looking at getting an external M2 NVME or just saving $ and using a USB 3 enclosure with a 1-2TB SSD. Right now I use an AFPS SSD for Time Machine backups (1TB Samsung 860 EVO Pro).

 

[Clix Pix]

Does T5 not have an issue with Catalina? Has this been resolved?

No problems with any of my T5s or my X5s here.... Then again, I do not use the proprietary software that comes bundled on the SSD; I always immediately erase and format a new T5 before using it, and I format it to APFS. It is a fairly straightforward procedure to reformat in Disk Utility, and I have never had problems with that. I think that the people who were reporting problems were also using that software, which is primarily intended for those who want to encrypt their device. Since Apple already provides a perfectly effective way of doing that anyway, I see no need to use the software on the T5.

I believe Samsung has indeed provided a firmware update for those who need it, thus resolving any problems that people were reporting.

 

[revmacian]

No problems with any of my T5s or my X5s here.... Then again, I do not use the proprietary software that comes bundled on the SSD; I always immediately erase and format a new T5 before using it, and I format it to APFS. It is a fairly straightforward procedure to reformat in Disk Utility, and I have never had problems with that. I think that the people who were reporting problems were also using that software, which is primarily intended for those who want to encrypt their device. Since Apple already provides a perfectly effective way of doing that anyway, I see no need to use the software on the T5.

I believe Samsung has indeed provided a firmware update for those who need it, thus resolving any problems that people were reporting.

Yeah, I always erase external media and format to an Apple-compatible file system.. things always work better after that. Thank you, it is good to hear that my normal practices should continue to work.