Tip: Avoid USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 drives

[Ryan Gallagher]

Unless you know your hardware implements Gen 2x2.
Perhaps this is something everyone knew already. But friendly heads up as I fell into this trap.

While there are reasonably priced 20Gb/s USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (dual lane) jump drives out there... apparently almost no host controllers support x2 operation, it was optional within the USB4 / TB4 spec, and it seems most vendors ignored it.

Our primary booth workstation laptop (Dell Precision 5760) supports TB4 and I thought I was being frugal by upgrading my personal jump drives to 20Gb/s 3.2 Gen 2x2, which all evidence suggested would be supported on the TB4 ports.

Nope. Spent a bunch of extra money only to get Gen2 10Gb/s speeds. Which realistically was only a 50% bump in transfer speeds compared to what I already had. It seems if I want to see real improvements I gotta pop for actual TB4 drives or enclosures, and pay the 40Gb/s tax... TBD if the system can even push that. Windows and NTFS overhead etc.

I would only buy Gen 2x2 advertised 20Gb/s drives if you realistically only need Gen2 10Gb/s performance, but will take the bonus if you happen to have some gear that supports x2.

Will probably return these two:
https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-X10-P...00X10PROSSD902

and pick up a single USB4/TB4 drive, put off the second unless the improvements are real.
https://www.amazon.com/Corsair-EX400.../dp/B0DR381N86

And yes, there are TB4 enclosures for relatively cheap, BYO NVME. But only the better ones manage thermals well, and all of them seem to be a little bulkier/heavier for every day carry. A WD Black or Samsung Evo Pro plus TB4 enclosure is comparable to that Corsair pricing.

I was pretty confused until I found a thread about framework laptops with the exact same complaint about the same crucial drives, framework responded that the intel controller didn't implement 2x2 support. At least I wasn't alone.

[Ryan Gallagher]

On second thought, That Corsair looks to be a rebadged version of this cheap mostly plastic enclosure.

https://www.amazon.com/SUNEAST-Exter.../dp/B0F8MXXJHQ

Was not expecting plastic. Maybe I'll skip that one. LOL Some corsair reviews complain about thermals for long read/write sessions, and a bunch of DOA complaints too. Although Tom's Hardware didn't seem to mind the unit. Certainly the most economical "combo" unit... I guess I need to research the enclosure offerings more.

[Marcel Birgelen]

To be honest, I'd be happy to see any USB device filling up 10 Gbit/s... which is still about 1,2 GBytes a second... I've seldomly seen such speeds consistently maintained, even between NVME SSDs on the same mainboard to be honest.

I've got a Mac mini M4 Pro, that, in a good day, reaches like 2.5 GByte/s read/write rates while performing local operations. If I copy files from that thing to a Mac Studio via 10 GBit/s network, I'm happy to reach 5 GBit/s, which is about 600 Megabyte/s, which I consider sufficient for most file operations.

[Ryan Gallagher]

To be honest, I'd be happy to see any USB device filling up 10 Gbit/s... which is still about 1,2 GBytes a second... I've seldomly seen such speeds consistently maintained, even between NVME SSDs on the same mainboard to be honest.

Yeah. Amazon SSD returns seem to be a bit iffy, I might keep these long enough to try the alternate, if there is no appreciable difference, just stick with them because the form factor is nicer.

With the Crucial X10s, for realistic DCP transfers I was getting about 500-700MB/s write. And a solid 900MB/s reading off them to the C: drive. This machine doesn't have much of a C: drive, and is shared by multiple staff logins (so not always able to just delete things), hence a lot of the motivation to upgrade my personal gig bag. My prior 3.5in USB caddies were already getting 500MB/s.

More than once I've bumped into the need to play out 4K Prores HQ off an external drive in a time crunch, cause not enough room on system drive. Just looking for a little more performance wiggle room. When this happened in the past we used the client's Gen 2 drive, I didn't have a fast/large enough house drive to facilitate a transfer to booth equipment in the time available.

We have a cheap Gen 1 nvme enclosure now IT handed down to us, but it likes to disconnect on it's own and gets hella hot (no thermal solution, just a PCB sled and slip over housing). I might pick up a nicer TB4 enclosure to test with that drive, and if it works better snag my own NVME (and make them buy a real enclosure for the existing).

[Ryan Gallagher]

A bit about the variety of USB4/TB4 enclosures... This bleeding edge stuff was all foreign to me.

So there are two controller chipsets available right now, and listings won't always make it clear, but you can somewhat tell based on the performance specs they cite:

JHL7440, the older one, theoretical reads at about 3100MB/s read and 2800MB/s write, more compatible with Mac, controller itself does not need as much of a thermal solution but the drive might.

ASM2464PD, the newer one, theoretical reads 3500~3700MB/s and writes 3100MB/s (almost symmetric), less compatible with Macs, controller itself can get very hot too, even at idle.

Then there is the SSD itself:
DRAM cache will perform better but also be much hotter.
HMB (Host Memory Buffer) SSDs rely on shared memory on the host for tables and cache, lesser performing, less data integrity, but much cooler.

That difference might explain why there seems to be a variety of accounts of thermal performance with the same enclosure.

Then there is the cable quality:
Plenty of people reporting issues with the kit cables, that went away after getting a quality TB4 cable, even some thermal issues were improved by changing cable. Strange. Perhaps TB3 cables were to blame there? (Or their thermals improved by accidentally downgrading to TB3?), but don't expect these overseas kits to have a great TB4 cable. Even OWC was solving cable issues via warranty by sending out the newer TB5 cables to solve TB4 enclosure issues.

Then there is the SSD cooling solution. Lots of newer high performance NVME drives have an integrated heat spreader or heat sink.... almost none of these enclosures are compatible with these taller drives, unless you are brave enough to void warranty and attempt removing factory thermal solution. None of these enclosures need the performance of PCIe Gen 5 m.2 ssds (which are commonly the ones with integrated coolers). Even if it fits, putting a Gen 5 ssd into one of these may cause it's own additional problems? The quality of the heat sinking or cooling appears to be the wild card with the TB4 enclosure kits. Plenty adopt stupid tiny little fans, but some attempt passive.

[Ryan Gallagher]

I'm coming around to thinking TB4 40Gb/s is not even worth it in the booth. It would be a very fast auxiliary storage device on the TB4 laptop sure but...

I have serious doubts the single USB2.0 port on the Doremi could even power a TB4 enclosure (despite it being backwards compatible), which consume like 15w when active, chipset depending (I think 7.5w was typical max on even the highest rated 2.0 non-standard ports). If you can't ingest off it too then there goes a lot of the utility of the zippy transfers. You'd probably have to add a powered TB4 hub to even attempt it. Network ingest is still gonna beat CRU or any enclosure at 2.0 speeds.

USB3 Gen 1 & 2 ssd devices do power off that Doremi 2.0 port without issue that I have found. USB4/TB4 may be a bridge too far. I suppose adding a USB3 card to the doremi would also be a play to consider. The enclosures may be smart enough to run at lower power modes and speeds when in compatibility mode, but would have to test em... not easy to discern.

I'm just bitter and having buyer's remorse, cause Gen 2x2 20Gb/s seemed like a affordable sweet spot for drives and performance, if support was more prevalent. Apparently some laptops now have dedicated 2x2 ports... but not ours. Leaving 40Gb/s performance of that laptop on the table and settling on existing 5 or 10 feels like a wasted resource, but perhaps not in the cards.