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So I added a Thunderbolt3 NVME SSD

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
Covid cobbling 101 warning 😁

I just put together a Sabrent 2TB NVME Thunderbolt3 external drive for my current working images. I use this drive for faster I/O when off-loading cards and working on images as my main image storage drive is a full of relatively slower spinning drives. I of course auto back-up this drive up to the main array.

This Sabrent "no tool" case is extremely well made from machined aluminum. It is truly no tools required, and comes with heat sink pads for the NVME drive. One minor note is that the supplied TB3 cable is notched to fit inside the Sabrent case, so another TB3 cable might need to be modified slightly to fit. One more significant note is this box is TB3 compatible only and not cross compatible with USBC: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08FT59SB6/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
The drive I put in it is this one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0829DZH2W/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

And yes it is fast! However I knew from the outset I didn't choose the fastest option... That Sabrent box uses a lower power chip. This helps with heat and helps with data I/O reliability, but runs slower than optimum capacity for NVME drives. I also filled it with a Rocket "Q" NVME drive -- the Quad stack tech is also slower than 2 or 3 stack NVME drives, but also cheaper per TB. So even with those two speed reducing factors, it is still over 3 times as fast as the USBC SSD it replaced and remains significantly faster than my current USBC CFex reader by about 50%, so other I/O bottlenecks are going to prevail anyway.
 
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algrove

Well-known member
Jack
I see Sabrent also makes a dual unit for cloning or as I might hope for a small portable RAID unit. I see Sabrent also makes 4 and 8TB models. For 2 TB I use the small credit card sized Samsung T7 SSD units for around $320, but on black Friday last BH offered them at $250 each,
 
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