Bison Bud

Since speed is probably the most touted advantage to using an SSD, I have to wonder if using one as an external drive really offers much of an advantage. Maybe there's better ways of doing it, but every external drive that I have used hooks up to the computer via a USB port. While Type 3 USB does offer better transfer rates then it's predecessors, is it fast enough to make using an SSD worthwhile? Thanks for any info. you might be able to provide and good luck and good shooting to all!

MT Shooter Loc: Montana

The other advantages are smaller size and more durability/longevity. Spinning hard drives take much more power and are prone to failure, they are not really designed for rugged use applications. USB 3.0 is pretty fast but does still present a pinch point. USB-C protocols will help that a lot once they are more readily available.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Probably not. I have a number of HDD External Drive, some up to 7,200rpm (sorry I don't know their various max transfer rates, nor care). Three are LapTop PC HDDs in enclosures, the others WD "My Passport Ultra"s. Anyway they all moves or copy files slowly via USB3. USB3 is the bottle-neck. S/D Cards, and Thumb Drives are not all so fast and far slower than a HDD or SSD.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

My understanding is there have been vast improvements with SSD technology over the last few years. And hopefully that includes longevity and data safety. But the last I actually know, if a SSD failures it is next to impossible to retrieve data from a dead one. Where as one can pay to have a HDD hand read in essence. Therefore part of the reason SSDs have been used for O/S and Applications and users use a second drive a spinning HHD for ones own data. But there must be improvements with that as SSDs increase in storage capacity to well past what one would need for O/S and Programs.

To me in ideal system would be a "tower" PC with a SSD and two paired (likely RAID configured) internal HDDs for data use and archiving. Long term archiving / back-up can be to paired duplicated External HDDs. This should provide data safety without breaking the bank.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

It helps one helluva lot on new Macs! They come equipped with USB-C connectors, but those connectors ALSO support ThunderBolt 3, which moves data at 40Gbps! Some higher end PCs are also adopting ThunderBolt 3.

Actually, ThunderBolt 3 connects just about everything, using the right adapter or dock. Typical example:

https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/docks/owc-thunderbolt-3-dock

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Yes. To put it in perspective, a 7200 RPM HD MAY reach 150-180 MBytes/sec on the outer tracks (fastest location) IF the data is sequential, and the access speed for random access to a new block is in the 12 range (that’s milliseconds). A SATA SSD typically will sustain 500-600 MBytes/sec regardless of whether the data is random or sequential or its location because it is a random access device with access time in the tens of nsec (that’s nanoseconds - a million times faster than the spinning disk). Now as to whether the external interface is the limiting factor, it depends on the interface. USB-2 is certainly limiting, but except for the protocol conversion, USB3.0, which is rated at 640 MBytes/sec is not limiting in terms of BW and neither is eSATA. Finally, USB3.1 and any version Thunderbolt certainly isn’t. Also, although there is a latency associated with protocol conversion from USB to SATA, etc., the access time of the SSD is so fast compared to the HD, that it’s negligible from the user’s perspective.

All these numbers are based on 6Gb SATAs which are the drives typically used as externals. Internal SSD drives that are m.2 or PCI connected are MUCH faster that SATA connected drives, typically in the 2200-3000 MB/sec range.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

This is the sort of drive video pros and cinematographers are adopting:

https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/express-4m2

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

And soon enough - like next year - we'll see USB 4.0 which mirrors Thunderbolt 3 in performance and connectivity.

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

USB 3.0 is fast, but not as fast as usb 3.1. I posted adding an external SSD to my iMac, at first using USB 3.0, THEN USING thunderbolt 2. Thunderbolt 2 is faster than usb 3.0 enough to make a difference.

Using USB 3.0 I saw improvement over my internal spinning disk, but not a great difference, with thunderbolt, the difference was pretty dramatic.

I am using a thunderbolt attached external SSD now as my startup disk.

https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-613446-1.html

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

Mr. SONY Loc: LI, NY

If your using the drive as a backup drive? NO!
While they do offer a faster response and a faster transfer rate.
Let's get real about really needing that increase in speed as to having a much larger storage drive.
4TB spinning drive $89.00
1TB SSD $150.00 on up.
So 4tb of SSD storage. A little more then $89.00
As for reliability.
I have had some failures. Everything fails.
And I have some 80mb drives that work just fine.
320mb, 750mb, 1tb, 2tb drives too.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/sandisk-extreme-2tb-external-usb-3-1-gen-2-type-a-type-c-portable-solid-state-drive/6185369.p?skuId=6185369

For the cost of a single 1tb SSD you could have have two 4tb drives.
Redundancy is most important.
My data including my photos are backed up to four 4tb drives and split between two 2tb drives.
Safety in numbers.

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

Reading one of the responses makes me ask for clarification.... was your intent to use a SSD as external storage or as a boot/startup disk?

Getting back to USB 3.0 vs USB 3.1 and Thunderbolt - USB 3.0 is not going to provide quite enough bandwidth to make it much faster then a spinning disk, on USB 3.1 and Thunderbolt the bandwidth is greater, which then allows the SSD to pass data at its highest possible sustained speed.

Since I have a Thunderbolt dual dock, one dock interface is currently used to hold a 1 TB SSD as my startup disk, which is way faster than my internal spinning (fusion) disk on my iMac. At some point I will probably add a 4TB SSD to the spare dock port to use as my image storage disk, which then allows me to access my images as fast as possible. I believe that in my case the use of an external SSD as a startup disk and a second one as image storage makes sense.

The next step would be to make use of an m.2 adapter, making thunderbolt 2 my bottleneck.

Harry0 Loc: Gardena, Cal

There ARE kinda clumsy interface cards avail.
I've been perusing a few for my Macs. An internal pcie card with 2 external sata3 ports.
The clumsy part is there's no power pass thru- either an external power supply, or power cables threaded out to another hole will be needed.
There ARE devices to convert your mSata card to use a 2.5" SSD.
But I want something external- I can switch and swap, and also use some of my 3.5" sata drives.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Depends on the use of the external drive. I would agree that depending on you backup size and window, the extra speed of the SSD is likely not that important in a backup application (I don’t see where the OP said it was for backup), but I’m not a fan of consumer grade HDs, even for backup. The extra cost of enterprise class HDs such as the WD/HGST Ultrastar (which is in the $170 range for 4TB) is well worth it. With spinning disk, you (usually) get what you pay for.

On the subject of interface speed, here’s the current state-of-the-art, but faster USB is in the works:

johnst1001a Loc: West Chester, Ohio

i use my ssd while editing photos as the load up and save faster. once im done i put them on a much higher capacity non ssd drive