MS All Models Confirmed the Mac Studio M1 Max cannot power a external 4TB Samsung 870 QVO SSD.

[transmaster]

I formatted My new 4TB to APFS. It is plugged into a powered Anker USB hub. Everything went smoothly and the SSD was quickly loading files. I decided to confirm if the USD/Thunderbolt can or cannot power this SSD. It can't, With the power USB hub no problem. plugged directly into the Max Studio M1 Max's front USB "C" port no, the rear USB "C"/Thunderbolt ports no joy there either. This is really disappointing in a $2000 Dollar machine. I would imagine Apple wanted to keep things reasonably cool and did not want add a power supply that could power much externally. I can just hear a Apple Genius saying well that is what iCloud is for. 🙄

I have a question I don't have anything here to measure the power output with a Thunderbolt 4 cable. I wonder if the chipset on a certified Thunderbolt cable permits a higher watt/amp's level on the rear port on the Mac Studio M1 Max. Can anyone supply this info. 🙏

 

[Pressure]

Thunderbolt 4 ports can supply 15 Watts of power.

You don't mention the enclosure you are using, is it Thunderbolt 3/4 or USB4? Is it an older version of USB?

 

[Sharky II]

I have a 1TB NVMe drive that kept ejecting and causing problems in Logic X (it was my main audio drive). It's a WD Black with this enclosure: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08RVC6F9Y/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Obviously it's a USB 3,2 connection not TB4.

I've switched to using the internal drive for current projects and the problems have stopped.

I'm wondering if it's to do with power, too, so following this thread... it's really to know if it's the drive, cable, enclosure, or the port on your computer/the Mac Studio.

At idle, system info says:

Current Available (mA): 900
Current Required (mA): 896
Extra Operating Current (mA): 0

 

[Fravin]

I have a 1TB NVMe drive that kept ejecting and causing problems in Logic X (it was my main audio drive). It's a WD Black

Those NVME drives gets too hot under load. This isn’t an issue when you are running them connected in you mainboard. The circuit of the mainboard controls it transfer speed providing mor or less power as it will getting hotter. In those tiny enclousures the circuit hasn’t the right components to do that, so it is constantly offering the same power to the drive, rellying in the drive itself to throthle down. When the enclosure board reaches certain temperature it simply shuts down to preserve its own circuit.

Avoiding self-made external drives (NVME Drive + enclousure) is a good hint. Simply look for the solutions provided by good brands that offers the drive ready like this one.

Another solution is to use M2 SATA drives instead NVME ones. As SATA drives uses less power and, consequently, does not gets too warm. The downside is that its transfer speeds sits bellow 500mb/s. Like this one.

I do prefer a slow transfer rate than a crashing drive. And for data files that are quite large, 1000mb/s or 500mb/s won’t make any difference since the drive’s cache will get full anyway.

 

[transmaster]

This is the enclosure I purchased to put this drive in. In the reviews there is a few mentions of the cable being a problem. I am going to dig into the cable stash and pull out and Anker C to C USB cable and see it that makes any difference.

Cable Matters Premium Aluminum 10Gbps Gen 2 USB C Hard Drive Enclosure for 2.5" SSD/HDD with USB-C and USB-A Cables - Thunderbolt 4 / USB4 / Thunderbolt 3 Port Compatible with MacBook Pro, MacBook Air

Cable Matters Premium Aluminum 10Gbps Gen 2 USB C Hard Drive Enclosure for 2.5" SSD/HDD with USB-C and USB-A Cables - Thunderbolt 4 / USB4 / Thunderbolt 3 Port Compatible with MacBook Pro, MacBook Air

www.amazon.com

 

[Fravin]

This is the enclosure I purchased to put this drive in. In the reviews there is a few mentions of the cable being a problem. I am going to dig into the cable stash and pull out and Anker C to C USB cable and see it that makes any difference.

Cable Matters Premium Aluminum 10Gbps Gen 2 USB C Hard Drive Enclosure for 2.5" SSD/HDD with USB-C and USB-A Cables - Thunderbolt 4 / USB4 / Thunderbolt 3 Port Compatible with MacBook Pro, MacBook Air

Cable Matters Premium Aluminum 10Gbps Gen 2 USB C Hard Drive Enclosure for 2.5" SSD/HDD with USB-C and USB-A Cables - Thunderbolt 4 / USB4 / Thunderbolt 3 Port Compatible with MacBook Pro, MacBook Air

www.amazon.com

The issue is that 2.5 SATA SSDs do use more power than M2 SATA.

Your enclousure is not compatible with drives that uses much power, that’s why it need an external power supply. From the amazon link you supplied:

• Some internal SSDs such as the Intel S3500 require 2A current, which exceeds USB power. These SSDs are not supported through USB and must be connected directly to a PSU.

 

[transmaster]

Looking around on Amazon I

The issue is that 2.5 SATA SSDs do use more power than M2 SATA.

Your enclousure is not compatible with drives that uses much power, that’s why it need an external power supply. From the amazon link you supplied:

• Some internal SSDs such as the Intel S3500 require 2A current, which exceeds USB power. These SSDs are not supported through USB and must be connected directly to a PSU.

There is the answer. 👍

On my Assembled PC's I have more power then I knew what to do with so it is a issue I never had. It works just fine plugged into the power USB hub. Belatedly I found a Thunderbolt 3 enclosure from OWC that uses the PCIe NVMe SSD's

OWC Envoy Express Thunderbolt 3 Enclosure for NVMe M.2 SSD

World’s first Thunderbolt certified bus-powered ‘add your own drive' enclosure. History-Making DIY Pocket-Sized Storage Solution While small in stature, the OWC Envoy Express is big news. For the first time ever in the history of Thunderbolt, you can buy a bus-powered Thunderbolt certified enclos...

www.amazon.com

I am telling myself, no,no,no,no you don't need the OWC enclosure thing, or another 4TB SSD. Including the 1TB internal on my Mac Studio I have 20 TB of storage. 😬

 

[transmaster]

This has been an interesting transition from the PC world. Plus I didn't keep up with the SSD world. The 4 TB drive works great. The ultimate solution down the road is going to be a NAS so my Mac and PC can share the same storage drives.

 

[Fishrrman]

I have 2.5" SATA drives in external enclosures, that run just fine using USB bus power from my Mac Mini(s) and MacBook Pros.

However, they aren't 4gb in capacity. All are 512gb or smaller.
I'm wondering if the additional storage capacity demands more power?

More thoughts:
Could it be firmware with the Samsung drive itself?
Could there be some small "bug" between the drive, the enclosure controller, and the Studio?

Does disk utility see the drive when it's connected directly to the Studio?

 

[Fravin]

I'm wondering if the additional storage capacity demands more power?

This is the drive project. Samsung 870 QOV is a hell of a drive, built to sustain transfer rate that are limited only by the SATA interface.

 

[BasilFawlty]

I'm wondering if this is till true for the new M2 studio?

 

[transmaster]

This is the drive project. Samsung 870 QOV is a hell of a drive, built to sustain transfer rate that are limited only by the SATA interface.

And they are on sale at the Amazon Samsung store.

 

[Fravin]

I'm wondering if this is till true for the new M2 studio?

It’s probably to do so. It’s not something to be tackled by engineers, I think they had designed it that way. Back in Hackintosh glory days people were discussing why USB ports works differently from those on Windows. I remember that USB support was somehow different in the two systems.

 

[transmaster]

It’s probably to do so. It’s not something to be tackled by engineers, I think they had designed it that way. Back in Hackintosh glory days people were discussing why USB ports works differently from those on Windows. I remember that USB support was somehow different in the two systems.

Just another trivial detail to learn about Apple. With the powered USB Hub I wonder is I can now copy over the files on my old NTFS drives. They will go on the 14 TB Seagate Hub in exFat.

 

[rumz]

This has been an interesting transition from the PC world. Plus I didn't keep up with the SSD world. The 4 TB drive works great. The ultimate solution down the road is going to be a NAS so my Mac and PC can share the same storage drives.

So how are you now using the 4TB QVO? Still the same enclosure but with powered hub? Or did you pick up an enclosure with dedicated power input? I‘ve been planning to pick up an 8TB QVO for storage and need to figure out what I need to make it work external to a Mac Studio. Thanks!

 

[Skeletor322]

I can run my 2.5 4TB Seagate spinning HD through a USB A-C adapter plugged in the thunderbolt port, and it works normally. I would think that it would use more amps than an SSD?

 

[transmaster]

So how are you now using the 4TB QVO? Still the same enclosure but with powered hub? Or did you pick up an enclosure with dedicated power input? I‘ve been planning to pick up an 8TB QVO for storage and need to figure out what I need to make it work external to a Mac Studio. Thanks!

I purchased a 10 port Anker 60W USB Hub. I housed the 4TB QVO in a Cable Matters Premium Aluminum 10Gbps Gen 2 USB C Hard Drive Enclosure for 2.5" SSD/HDD. Works great. I alway add a multi port powered USB hub to My computers for convenience. Anker is my go to brand for powered USB Hubs. I purchased an additional cable for the hub, and USB "B" to "C" cable to go from the hub to the Mac Studio.

 

[transmaster]

I can run my 2.5 4TB Seagate spinning HD through a USB A-C adapter plugged in the thunderbolt port, and it works normally. I would think that it would use more amps than an SSD?

I never tried this, don't have any 2.5" HD's. The SSD in question were never intended to be hooked up to the MS permanently and the location of the rear ports on the MS are very inconvenient to get to given how the MS is placed at the radio station. Since I have a bunch of 3.5 HD's to copy over I purchased a powered usb. So now I have 10 USB ports for the MS located where they are easy to get too. Purchased a housing for the 3.5 HD's which I will use to copy them over to the 14TB Seagate one touch hub. 🙏 Anker how about a powered 10 or more USB hub for USB "C" dare I hope for a similar Thunderbolt hub. I don't need addtional HDMI ports, SD slots, etc etc just Thunderbolt 🙏

 

[transmaster]

Down the road there is the OWC enclosure that allows for the use of all of the current SSD form factors. and depending on what sort of SSDs are installed can go to 64TB in storage capacity in up to a RAID 10 configuration.

 

[rumz]

I purchased a 10 port Anker 60W USB Hub. I housed the 4TB QVO in a Cable Matters Premium Aluminum 10Gbps Gen 2 USB C Hard Drive Enclosure for 2.5" SSD/HDD. Works great. I alway add a multi port powered USB hub to My computers for convenience. Anker is my go to brand for powered USB Hubs. I purchased an additional cable for the hub, and USB "B" to "C" cable to go from the hub to the Mac Studio.

Thanks for sharing those details. Sounds like the same enclosure you started with, just needs power from the powered hub? I’ll take a look at Anker hubs in case that becomes something I need.

No issues with drives disconnecting from the Mac when it wakes from sleep? (Seems like that’s sometimes an issue with external drives connected via certain hubs paired with Mac mini / Mac Studio, but I can’t remember which. For that reason I was hoping to have my main storage devices connected directly to the Studio. Sounds like your current setup wasn’t intended to be permanent though huh.)

 

[transmaster]

No issues with drives disconnecting from the Mac when it wakes from sleep? (Seems like that’s sometimes an issue with external drives connected via certain hubs paired with Mac mini / Mac Studio, but I can’t remember which. For that reason I was hoping to have my main storage devices connected directly to the Studio. Sounds like your current setup wasn’t intended to be permanent though huh.)

It is a good thing you mentioned this when the Mac Studio rebooted from updating to 13.4.1 I had to unplug and replug the 4TB drive to bring it back in. If you never shut down a computer like I do it is not an issue. But all you would have to do is unplug, or turn off a hub before you reboot, and the reverse once the Mac opens.

It is permanent for now. The macOS world is subtly different for the Windows world I am coming from, but the learning curve is starting to flatten out. Right now I am working to bring back all of the many TB's of media files I have not had access to for several years. I should finish that up next week. Talking with people at Hands on Mac they tell me that thunderbolt 4 SSD housing are on the horizon. As I mentioned elsewhere OWC has a Thunderbolt 3 SSD housing that is good for 2 to 64TB of capacity.


I also have a 14TB Seagate One Touch Hub they make the One Touch up to 20 TB's. There are zero problems with restart with it. If you can call it a downside it is formatted in exFAT but this means both and Mac and a PC can read/write to it.

 

[transmaster]

With Rumz post in mind I pulled out of the cable stash a Thunderbolt cable and plugged it into one of the rear Thunderbolt ports, and then into the 4TB QCO drive. Instant joy the 4TB QCO in the Cable Matters case mounted without fuss.

 

[Traverse]

Both my old Mac Studio and MacBook Pro are powering TWO 8TB Samsung SSDs in the OWC Mercury dual mini USB 3.1 enclosure so the issue is definitely either the enclosure you're using or a bad port.

Link to enclosure.