A drive with USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gbps) might deliver slightly better results paired with a port that offers those speeds. You can use your slowest port on a Mac or a USB 3 hub attached to it and likely achieve the maximum possible rate.Īs I noted in another Mac 911 article about using an SSD for an external Photos library, you can buy a fairly affordable SSD that has an internal SATA interface and delivers no more than about 600MBps, which is conveniently just below the 5Gbps baseline speed of any USB 3 port. That means the fastest drive at 200MBps can only perform at under 2Gbps, and any USB 3 port would suffice. A “fast” 7,200 rpm drive can bump read speeds to 200MBps and writes to 150MBps. Such drives can perform at about 100 megabytes per second (MBps) for read and write. ![]() ![]() A 5,400 revolutions per minute (rpm) hard drive might be fine for Time Machine or other high-capacity purposes in which transfer speeds aren’t a key issue. ![]() For instance, the late 2014 model Mac mini has four USB ports that support 5Gbps the 2020 M1 Mac mini has two Type-A ports that also support 5Gbps (3.1 Gen 1), but the USB-C ports handle USB 3.1 Gen (10Gbps) and USB 4 plus Thunderbolt 3 and 4 (20Gbps).Ĭonsider this when looking at drive performance. (We reviewed Mactracker as a Mac Gem.) Note the speed listed for various ports. You can use the free Mactracker to look up your model of Mac, focusing on the Connections tab.
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