How to max out data transfer speed on 2.5" HDD enclosure

I have a 1TB 850 Evo in a Astone HDD enclosure that advertised up to 3gbps. In real life it is no way near the number it stated (about 100MBps). I am just curious if there are actually ways to achieve what they advertise. RAID maybe?

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You're gonna lose speed in an enclosure. 100 "MB" is ~800 "Mb" a second. 3Gbs is ~375 MBs. If you're using USB3 in that enclosure I'd be surprised to see anything over 300MB sustained. The best I've ever got sustained is ~240MB (~2Gb/s) with peaks near 300MB (~2.4Gb/s). I am using masscool enclosures and have been very happy with their performance. I've been curious to try some Plugable brand enclosures/SATA to usb3 adapters but haven't bothered since my masscool perform pretty well. And like you said "advertised up to". I believe usb 3 is rated at 5Gb/s. Haven't seen anything near 600MB/s in real life performance. Usb2 was rated 480Mb/s I believe. Best sustained performance I ever saw over usb2 connections was almost 50MB/s. Also there are other factors like the size of the files you are transferring.

 

USB3.0 is pretty useless for attaining the highest speeds possible from an SSD. And that is even ensuring your enclosure is using the best SATA6 to USB3.0 chipset too.

RAID0 will get you nowhere fast. The limitations of the chipset already have set the ceiling you're running into.

An eSATA connection to your notebook (if it offers it natively) or even a FireWire 800+ connection will be faster, especially for latency, small file performance and/or audio file workflows where timing is important. Even though it may seem on the surface to match what you are now getting; a FireWire interface is the closest to raw drive performance next to good implementation of eSATA.


Along with the above issues, are you possibly suffering from the Samsung issues EVO/TLC drives are exhibiting, even after the Samsung firmware fix?

See:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1512915/...enchmarks-needed-to-confirm-affected-ssds/310


See:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1507897/...d-drops-on-old-written-data-in-the-drive/1850


Try defragging the drive with MyDefrag using the Data Monthly scheme and see if your EVO/Enclosure results are any better. If they are, and you haven't done the firmware fix, you need to connect the drive to an internal SATA3/6 port and run the update/restoration fix Samsung provides.

(And no, Magician will not find any new updates even if they are needed - go to the following link to get the latest firmware).

See:
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/minisite/SSD/us/html/support/downloads.html

And scroll down to "Samsung SSD 840 EVO Performance Restoration Software".

 

Should I even bother to get a faster enclosure to increase performance? Although it doesn't reach the max 375MBps, will a 5gbps enclosure be faster than a 3gbps?

 

Depends on what you're doing and how often.

I would be more concerned with the possibly subpar EVO in there than the SATAtoUSB bridge used.

 

Probably not. Like tiller said you're not gonna max it out. You're not gonna saturate usb3. I don't have experience with esata or FireWire but those are probably options, if said enclosure has proper hardware to utilize it. I do think you should be getting closer to 200MB/s though. Not all my transfers sustain even 200MB/s. My drives are getting full and I see 150 ± 20-30MB/s now.

 

Would Samsung software works on external drive tho? There aren't 850 software yet but is it the same as 840's?

Do you mind sharing the model of your enclosure? Same here I have no esata and firewire natively on my laptop.

 

I just bought another enclosure and the performance has doubled. The new one advertised it could do 5gbps but it could be the older one has weaker chipset or parts.

 

Masscool aluminum enclosure bought 2-3 years ago though I think newegg still has them. Plugable, the brand, has been very good with their products also. Haven't bought anything HDD or SATA related bit their usb2 and usb3 hubs have been spectacular. Their reviews for their enclosures/docks have outstanding reviews on amazon.

 

Does the new enclosure support UASP?

Or maybe it just has a newer and better USB 3.0 chip.

John

 

You should be able to break 300MB/s with a native intel host usb3.0,

With typical usb3.0 set-up, regardless of chipset, sustainable ~200MB/s should be pretty easy to get.