We are starting to do long road trips, (non diving) and taking thousands of images, Sony A7RV 61mp and various 4k video, Nikon, Canon, GoPro, Insta360. I am still using a 10yr old MacBook Air and LaCie Rugged 2TB external hard drive. Daily downloads can take +30mins per card. Laptop and external hard drive using USB 3. Looking for a faster way to download from cards to external hard drive while on the road. Assuming it's time to upgrade external hard drive and maybe laptop or other type of device. Of course trying to keep cost down and not really looking to edit while on road. All input welcome. Again main goal is just to get images backed up daily.

Edited Friday at 01:21 PM3 days by aquabluedreams

You need a new PC .. and you can buy some external SSD 2TB or more.

I download every days my SD's on my tablet and make copy on 2 externals SSD 2TB.
It's not extremly fast but I don't need 30 minute far away. from that.
My PC is not the yougest 3 or 4 year old,

Hope it will help you.

Yes, take in account that your "speed" will be capped to the lowest device of the chain. So regardless of your lightning SSD NVME, if you have a slow usb/thunderbolt interface, you will stick to it

New laptop and a PC one at that (words "MacBook" and "keeping cost down" do not belong in the same sentence), with a USB-C 3.2/4.0 interface, ideally 2 ports minimum. For external drive grab a 4TB NVMe SSD - either "premade" one (like Samsung T7) or DYI e.g. SSD separately + and an enclosure (for example Samsung 990 Pro 4TB and Sabrent EC-NVME (basic but it will do)). Additional benefit will be that these will be more reliable in "on-the-road" environment - hard drives are mechanical devices and do not like shocks and bumps, they will fail sooner or later, rugged or not.

Add some small UHS-II card reader (ideally also on USB-C) and you will have copy speeds ~200MB/s - emptying that SD card will take seconds, provided its also a fast one (again, Sabrent makes very good ones, that aren't cost prohibitive and reach 190-200MB/s easy).

And you can then work on those images/videos straight on that drive, as it will be fast enough.

Edited Friday at 02:28 PM3 days by makar0n

20 minutes ago, makar0n said:

SSD separately + and an enclosure (for example Samsung 990 Pro 4TB and Sabrent EC-NVME

makar0n gave me really helpful advice with this some time ago and I got the Samsung 990 Pro 4TB and an enclosure. The work of moments to put it together and it works like a charm. I use it as my main photo storage attached to..... [look away, makar0n]...... a Mac Studio. It would certainly be perfect for a travel storage disk.

One thing I did find and that was new to me, is that you have to pick the right USB-C cable to make sure you get the best possible speed. I thought they were all just two plugs and a cable. Seems they ain't. What works best (for me, anyway) is a 20GB/s cable.

22 minutes ago, TimG said:

One thing I did find and that was new to me, is that you have to pick the right USB-C cable to make sure you get the best possible speed. I thought they were all just two plugs and a cable. Seems they ain't. What works best (for me, anyway) is a 20GB/s cable.

Yes, absolutely true!

Usually I would grab the first cable I find at home but actually most of them are cheap cables designed mainly as power cord. hence some real data transfer cable is paramount.

26 minutes ago, TimG said:

(..)I use it as my main photo storage attached to..... [look away, makar0n]...... a Mac Studio. (..)

Blasphemy! Burn the heretic. Kill the mutant. Purge the unclean!

27 minutes ago, TimG said:

One thing I did find and that was new to me, is that you have to pick the right USB-C cable to make sure you get the best possible speed. I thought they were all just two plugs and a cable. Seems they ain't. What works best (for me, anyway) is a 20GB/s cable.

Yeah, USB-C ones are a bit magical, not just a simple cable :)

I am normally using Club3D ones (they also make very good Display Port and HDMI cables) - solid and most importantly USB-IF certified. Quality gets even more important when you are planning to use these as power as well, and shoving 240W through, or to run an external monitor.

Example below, USB4, 40Gbps, 240W, 8K60Hz

https://www.club-3d.com/en/detail/2600/usb4_gen3x2_type_c_bi_directional_usb_if_certified_cable_8k60hz_data_40gbps_pd_240w(48v-5a)_epr_m-m_1m_-_3.28ft/

Even marked as working with Apple. Oh horror 🤣

There is also a crazier one, 80Gbps, 240W, 8K240Hz version:

https://www.club-3d.com/en/detail/2675/usb_80gbps_certified_240w_4k540hz_type_cr_1.2m_-_3.94ft_black_cable/

Edited Friday at 03:33 PM3 days by makar0n

1 hour ago, TimG said:

I use it as my main photo storage attached to..... [look away, makar0n]...... a Mac Studio.

🤮


Sorry I was not fast enough to look away....


🤪

2 hours ago, CaolIla said:

Sorry I was not fast enough to look away....

Sorry mate. I should have given you more warning. Feel better soon.

👹

As others have said you need a fast drive and fast card reader together with fast cards. Just picking any old card reader can be quite slow ( and don't even talk about plugging your camera for many cameras - it's a lot slower) I'm using a Sandisk mutli card Pro reader which gets decent speed.

I assume macs report download speed when emptying drives - what does yours report? I get 160 MB/sec with a Sandisk card labelled as 200MB/sec which are pretty cheap these days. The cable I'm using might be slowing it down a touch, but haven't tried other combinations. I could probably get something faster but it would involve time and effort and $$ and most of the time the download is done in a few minutes. That card reader is reported to get 295-300 MB/sec with Sandisk 300MB/sec rated cards.

For best speed you want to have two ports on your PC, one for the card reader and one for the storage which is going to fastest as a SSD.

I've haven't heard a lot of good things about Lacie drives in fact any external drive using spinning drives bought as a complete unit. I've always used external enclosures, preferably with fan cooling and they are generally reliable.

7 hours ago, Chris Ross said:

(...) I've always used external enclosures, preferably with fan cooling and they are generally reliable.

How to say "I'am living in Australia" without actually saying it 😂

Now (bad) jokes aside, most of NVMe enclosures rely on passive cooling, i.e. enclosure acting as a heatsink. As long as it's semi decent (aluminum and not too much plastic, good thermal pad and large contact area), this is usually enough for a normal usage. Might of course wary in very hot climates, but again, most NVMe drives are rated up to 70 degrees before they start to throttle.

There are very few passive cooling enclosures that are really designed well enough to handle full on, constant maximum use of the NVMe drive. But then again, such usage is rather extreme, and is not going to happen by just copying or editing a few pictures.

Example would be SilverStone MS12/MS12-40G.

Enclosures with active cooling aka fan, can be a better choice in some cases, as active cooling will always be superior, but come at the cost of being quite bulkier, and possibly nosier (small fan).

Example would be Icy Box IB-1922MF-C32.

Much more important performance wise is not to go for bottom of the barrel DRAM/SLC-cache-less NVMe drives - that will hurt you much more when writing a lot.

Edited Saturday at 11:46 AM2 days by makar0n

15 hours ago, makar0n said:

How to say "I'am living in Australia" without actually saying it 😂

Now (bad) jokes aside, most of NVMe enclosures rely on passive cooling, i.e. enclosure acting as a heatsink. As long as it's semi decent (aluminum and not too much plastic, good thermal pad and large contact area), this is usually enough for a normal usage. Might of course wary in very hot climates, but again, most NVMe drives are rated up to 70 degrees before they start to throttle.

There are very few passive cooling enclosures that are really designed well enough to handle full on, constant maximum use of the NVMe drive. But then again, such usage is rather extreme, and is not going to happen by just copying or editing a few pictures.

Example would be SilverStone MS12/MS12-40G.

Enclosures with active cooling aka fan, can be a better choice in some cases, as active cooling will always be superior, but come at the cost of being quite bulkier, and possibly nosier (small fan).

Example would be Icy Box IB-1922MF-C32.

Much more important performance wise is not to go for bottom of the barrel DRAM/SLC-cache-less NVMe drives - that will hurt you much more when writing a lot.

The biggest problem is there are so many junk enclosures out there. I did find this active cooled one which claims to be very quiet:

Simplecom Dual Bay NVMe M.2 SSD...

Simplecom Dual Bay NVMe M.2 SSD Enclosure Offline Clone D...

Buy Simplecom Dual Bay NVMe M.2 SSD Enclosure Offline Clone Docking Station (SD560) - Buy Now, Pay Later + FREE pick-up & same day dispatch!

None of the specs though mention anything about DRAM or SLC- cache?

I usually buy Samsung storage for my SSDs, was supposed to be the "best" a few years back but haven't researched recently. My internal HDD on my desktop tower is a Samsung 4TB SSD 2.5"form factor, but I'm still using a spinning backup drive in an external enclosure. I'm thinking about what I'll update it with down the track??

But back to the OP, any SSD with a 200MB/sec card and good reader will eat a system using a spinning HDD plugged into a laptop I would think.

59 minutes ago, Chris Ross said:

None of the specs though mention anything about DRAM or SLC- cache?

Those will be specs of the drive itself, rather than the enclosure - seems to be getting tricky to find the real specs of the drives these days, manufacturers seem to swap out components for some models and don't always make it clear!

15 hours ago, Chris Ross said:

The biggest problem is there are so many junk enclosures out there. I did find this active cooled one which claims to be very quiet:

Simplecom Dual Bay NVMe M.2 SSD...

Simplecom Dual Bay NVMe M.2 SSD Enclosure Offline Clone D...

Buy Simplecom Dual Bay NVMe M.2 SSD Enclosure Offline Clone Docking Station (SD560) - Buy Now, Pay Later + FREE pick-up & same day dispatch!

None of the specs though mention anything about DRAM or SLC- cache?

I usually buy Samsung storage for my SSDs, was supposed to be the "best" a few years back but haven't researched recently. My internal HDD on my desktop tower is a Samsung 4TB SSD 2.5"form factor, but I'm still using a spinning backup drive in an external enclosure. I'm thinking about what I'll update it with down the track??

But back to the OP, any SSD with a 200MB/sec card and good reader will eat a system using a spinning HDD plugged into a laptop I would think.

As @Yorkie88 has noted, DRAM/SLC-Cache refers to the actual NVMe drive, not the enclosure.

DRAM cache, to quote WD paper "(...) dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) was routinely included as a cache for SSDs and to improve drive performance. The DRAM served as cache for writing data to the drive, and for storing the mapping tables that keep record of the location of the data on the SSD to allow access to the data."

Kind of a super fast memory that proves very helpful when reading/writing to the drive, especially when dealing with lots of smaller files (i.e. "random"), by often caching the frequently accessed data. Nowadays, there is also another tech emerging, often replacing DRAM, called HMB, which uses host computer RAM memory instead of a built-in one.

Mechanical HDD's include similar caching too, but usually much smaller, say 64-512 MB.

As for SLC cache - SSD/NVMe drives use NAND memory to actually store the data. There are currently 4 major types, as below:

SLC being the fastest and having most endurance (i.e. how much data you can write to it before it starts to degrade), but also limited by capacity (i.e. requiring more cells for the same capacity of the drive), hence ending up being the most expensive. Some early SSDs used that, but its pretty non-existent in consumer space nowadays, with all companies moving first to MLC, and now to TLC - slower, reliable enough, and most importantly cheaper.

SLC (or pseudo SLC) cache helps to mitigate the fact that drives use slower TLC based NAND memory, one that would not allow for example for writes at 5000 MB/s. In other words, when you are writing to an NVMe drive, you are actually writing to a very fast SLC cache (provided one exists), and that cache in turn then "distributes" it to a much slower TLC NAND that the NVMe drive is using to store data. Larger the cache, the better, as this means you can write much larger data sizes without losing performance due to writing directly to the TLC NAND.

There is an interesting graph in TechPowerUp review of Samsung 990 Pro, which supposedly comes with 226GB of pseudo-SLC cache, that illustrates this:

TechPowerUp - Samsung 990 Pro 2 TB Review

Tester attempted to fill the drive completely (in one go, i.e. 2TB being written in one operation), note how around 190-200 GB, speeds dropped drastically from just under 5000 MB/s to "just" 1400 MB/s. Reason? The fast SLC cache was filled (and because the write was ongoing and more data coming, it could not "distribute" the data to TLC fast enough to make itself free/available again) and now the data is being written directly to the slower TLC NAND. Hence the bigger SLC cache the better, though of course one in here would be more than enough moving few tens of GB of pictures for example.

Nowadays, price difference between DRAM/HMB/SLC-cache-less drives and those that have these is not that big, hence frankly I would not bother with those, unless really on the budget.

Good choices are generally (a few major brands, there is of course way more):

Samsung 990 Pro

TeamGroup MP44

Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus

Seagate Firecuda 530R

WD Black SN850X

I would not bother with PCIe 5.0 drives, these are an overkill even for a desktop PCs, not to mention external storage, where you would not be even able to get PCIe 5.0 speeds due to USB/Thunderbolt limitations. PCIe 4.0 is more than enough.

There is a very good database at TechPowerUp, with detailed specs, and often accompanying reviews, including performance in various workflows (photos included)

SSD Specs Database - TechPowerUp

As for enclosures - yeah, LOTS of garbage out there - plastic, crappy controllers, poor thermal pads, barely any contact area. I generally stick to the below:

Sabrent

SilverStone

Icy Dock (also known as Raidsonic)

Akasa

Lindy

Speaking of SilverStone, I had a further look at their latest 40Gbps USB4 offering, MS12-40, and it is actually enclosure with an active cooling aka fan. Seems they have added it. Quite pricey though, probably due to being USB4.

Budget wise Sabrent has quite a good choice (EC-NVME), and to be honest 10Gbps is often more than enough - that will translate to theoretical 1250MB/s (around 1000MB/s in real life), and will do for a normal photo workflow. There are also 20Gbps enclosures out there (like the original MS12), if you need something faster but not yet USB4 speeds. Note that the "amazing" MacBooks will not support that - speed will drop to 10Gbps. These do only 10 or 40. If using a PC these are fine, provided your USB-C port is 3.2 Gen 2x2 or USB4.

Now I will stop boring everybody and go dream about some nudis. Or a pile of burning Macbooks ;)

And since I cannot resist (yes, yes, I am a horrible human being) :

Edited 15 hours ago15 hr by makar0n