Fastest Bus Powered Thunderbolt 2 Storage: Fusion PCIe Flash Drive

Originally posted September 11th, 2015 by rob-ART morgan, mad scientist

You know by know that I am a big fan of the Samsung SM951 flash blade. One of its secrets is lower power usage than other flash blades which makes it the perfect candidate for a bus powered storage device. And only Thunderbolt 2 can come close to using it's full speed potential. Sonnet Technologies saw this and produced the Fusion PCIe Flash Drive.

GRAPH LEGEND
Fusion PCIe TB2 = Sonnet Technologies PCIe Flash Drive (bus-powered from Thunderbolt 2 port on any Mac)
Tempo PCIe MPt = Sonnet Technologies PCIe 3.0 SSD (SM951 flash mounted on a PCIe M.2 board and installed inside a 2010 Mac Pro's x4 PCIe slot #4)
miniSwap USB3 = FirmTek miniSwap/U3 bus-powered USB 3 enclosure with Samsung 850 EVO 6Gbps SATA SSD connected to the USB 3.0 port of the iMac 5K

LARGE SEQUENTIAL TRANSFER TEST
We used AJA System Test to benchmark file level sequential transfer speed using a 16GB test file (and 4K frame size). RED graph bar means the fastest overall in Megabytes per Second.

SMALL RANDOM TRANSFER TEST
We used a range of 4K to 1024K blocks in the Standard Random test in QuickBench as a predictor boot volume 'house keeping' performance and a simulation of an application that does multiple small random transfers. RED graph bar means the fastest overall in Megabytes per Second.

INSIGHTS
I've been dreaming of a bus powered Thunderbolt 2 storage device that achieves the maximum real-world speed of Thunderbolt 2. The Fusion PCIe with its fast Flash module is a dream come true.

As you can see from the graph, it rivals the speed of the Tempo PCIe 3.0 SSD -- the same SM951 flash storage module mounted in the PCIe bay of a 2010 Mac Pro tower -- technically bus-powered storage, too.

Finally, up to now, the fastest (and only) bus-powered external flash storage for contemporary Macs used USB 3.0. We included the fastest example of bus-powered USB 3.0 storage (FirmTek miniSwap/U3 with Samsung 850 EVO 6Gbps SSD). You can easily see the advantage of the Fusion PCIe Flash bus-powered Thunderbolt 2 storage device.

One more thing: The Fusion PCIe Flash Drive can be used as Boot Volume.

Feedback or comments? Feel free to email me,
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WHERE TO BUY THE FUSION PCIE FLASH DRIVE

• Order from the Sonnet Technologies onliine store.

WHERE TO BUY THE TEMPO PCIE 3.0 SSD

• Designed for mounting inside the Mac Pro tower or a Thunderbolt 2 expansion box, it can be ordered on the Sonnet Technologies online store.

WHERE TO BUY AN SM951 FLASH BLADE WITH M.2 CONNECTOR

• Contact RamCity for Samsung SM951 AHCI M.2 PCie 3.0 x4 80mm SSD. They also sell the Lycom M.2 PCIe SSD to PCIe x4 adapter we use to mount it in the Mac Pro tower and Thunderbolt PCIe expansion boxes.

WHERE TO BUY THE FIRMTEK MINISWAP/U3 ENCLOSURE

• Order the bus-powered miniSwap/U3 direct from FirmTek online store
• They also make the smaller, lighter dLite bus-powered USB 3.0 enclosure.

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copyright 2015 Rob Art Morgan
"BARE facts on Macintosh speed FEATS"
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