OWC makes a few good enclosures. I use a Thunderbolt2 enclosure with 2 drive slots, one with an 3.5' SSHD boot drive, the second a 7200RPM large drive which is used for external storage. Speeds the enclosure are:.

Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C type connector) 40Gbps. Thunderbolt 2 (MiniDVI type connector) 20Gbps. Thunderbolt 1 (Mini DVI type connector) 10Gbps. USB 3.1 10Gbps. USB 3 5Gbps.

Firewire 800 800Mbps. USB 2 480Mbps. Firewire 400 400Mbps. USB 1 12Mbps Check the specs on your Mac to find out what ports it has, then choose the fastest that is compatible with your Mac. Generally, anything under USB3 is not a good candidate for an external boot drive. SSD SATA3 drive transfer speeds are 6Gbps. The additional bandwidth might be useful if you attach other devices in the chain.

Thunderbolt can daisy chain displays, or other Thunderbolt devices, so the drive may only use 6Gbps of bandwidth but the rest could be used to drive displays or other things. OWC makes a few good enclosures. Shortcuts 2.1 free download for mac. I use a Thunderbolt2 enclosure with 2 drive slots, one with an 3.5' SSHD boot drive, the second a 7200RPM large drive which is used for external storage.

External Casing For Macbook Air

Speeds the enclosure are:. Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C type connector) 40Gbps. Thunderbolt 2 (MiniDVI type connector) 20Gbps. Thunderbolt 1 (Mini DVI type connector) 10Gbps. USB 3.1 10Gbps. USB 3 5Gbps.

Firewire 800 800Mbps. USB 2 480Mbps. Firewire 400 400Mbps. USB 1 12Mbps Check the specs on your Mac to find out what ports it has, then choose the fastest that is compatible with your Mac. Generally, anything under USB3 is not a good candidate for an external boot drive.

SSD SATA3 drive transfer speeds are 6Gbps. The additional bandwidth might be useful if you attach other devices in the chain. Thunderbolt can daisy chain displays, or other Thunderbolt devices, so the drive may only use 6Gbps of bandwidth but the rest could be used to drive displays or other things. Post Merged, Mar 5, 2018 -Don't really want to start a new thread in my search for ssd answers so I guess my next question MAY fit alongside this, even if only vaguely. I have read about TRIM and how it is a good thing for external SSDs, but also that previously it has not been enabled for third-party external SSDs over USB, but is for Thunderbolt (thats how this is relevant in this thread!). My iMac is a late 2013 21.5', running High Sierra - I intend to use the external SSD as my boot drive and will have all my apps and iTunes installed on it, but the rest of my data etc will all be on other drives, mainly external spinners but also my now-redundant internal 5400rpm drive. I believe that my SSD will be formatted with APFS, is this correct?

If so, does this do the same job as TRIM or do I have to enable that manually, and is that even possible? Post Merged, Mar 5, 2018 -Don't really want to start a new thread in my search for ssd answers so I guess my next question MAY fit alongside this, even if only vaguely. I have read about TRIM and how it is a good thing for external SSDs, but also that previously it has not been enabled for third-party external SSDs over USB, but is for Thunderbolt (thats how this is relevant in this thread!). My iMac is a late 2013 21.5', running High Sierra - I intend to use the external SSD as my boot drive and will have all my apps and iTunes installed on it, but the rest of my data etc will all be on other drives, mainly external spinners but also my now-redundant internal 5400rpm drive. I believe that my SSD will be formatted with APFS, is this correct? If so, does this do the same job as TRIM or do I have to enable that manually, and is that even possible? Click to expand.TB2 uses the same connectors as TB1, so that is still an option.

APFS is only supported on internal SSD, not external. SSD will have 6Gbps 600MBps (SATA3) bus speeds (actually less as read write speeds on SSD tend to top out around 500-550MBps which is roughly 4Gbps. So, USB3 should work just fine, but make sure the enclosure supports boot drives. Not all do, you need to look for UASP (SCSCI over USB) support.

Cheap enclosures may not support this. OWC has a good selection of enclosures and is very detailed on their specs as to whether they will support booting from the drive enclosure. Don't go cheap and deal with frustrations if this is going to be your boot drive! TRIM may or may not work with a USB drive, but some SSD have their own TRIM type capabilities (garbage collector or other 'brand' names). I suspect UASP capable drives should support TRIM, but you have to enable it via commands from Terminal (“sudo trimforce enable”). To know for sure if a USB connected SSD supports TRIM, go to Apple About This Mac System Report Hardware SATA/SATA Express and look for “TRIM Support” under the specs. If TRIM Support is not listed, your enclosure most likely does not support TRIM.

If it is listed but says “No”, you should be able to enable it. But, I understand TRiM can be a problem for some SSD so make sure the drive you buy supports it. Click to expand.Supported vs possible are two different things. The only configuration Apple currently supports APFS on boot drives is internal SSD, not Fusion, not HDD, and not external drives.

Can you format external and other drives APFS? Yes, but you are on your own in terms of support from Apple. Will it work without issues?

External Casing For Mac Pro

Again, good luck. For external drives being used for general storage, probably few issues, but then why. If you are adventuresome, cavalier, or curious, go ahead and try. But, there are clear warnings of issues including a number of articles on external APFS formatted drives being used as Time Machine destination.

And you have to pause and ask why Apple doesn't convert other drives in the upgrade, clearly they are doing so out of an abundance of caution. Don't mean to be flip about it, just sharing what Apple has said about the subject up to now. The HS upgrade checks for internal SSD, and converts it to APFS, All other configs are left in HFS format. But, DU supports APFS formatting, albeit without warning which is probably an oversight on Apple's part. Will they support APFS on other drives in the future? Probably, but they apparently feel there are enough 'bugs' to warrant skipping the conversion at this time.

Again I suggest the Oyen Digital enclosure. Don't worry about not having TRIM when booting and running a Mac via USB3. I've been doing this for FIVE YEARS now, with no ill effects at all. I have booted and run my 2012 Mac Mini exclusively via USB3 since I unpacked it in January 2013. Running fine, using it now.

Another thought: If you don't have the SSD yet, have you considered a 'pre-packaged' USB3 SSD, such as the Samsung t5 or something like this: Right out-of-the-box, it should give you reads of about 430mbps and writes around 300-350mbps.