Sonnet Fusion 1TB external SSD drive

[panamajack]

In a September 2016 “Techspot” review, the focus was a comparison between an older release of the Sonnet Fusion TB3 with only 512GB, and alternative external SSD USB 3.x drives such as the Samsung T3. At that point, the Sonnet Fusion 512GB utilized the Samsung SM951 M.2 SSD. Together with the 4-lane PCIe capability of TB3, that version of the Sonnet kit was available for about $800. The Sonnet Fusion was surrounded by a massive heat sink, was bus-powered, and bootable. Plus compatible with both Mac and PCs. Featuring a USB-C connector, it only worked with a TB3 port. The cost per GB was 5x relative to the T3, so it was clearly aimed toward 4K editing, etc. At that time, marketing specs were 2,100 MB/sec read and 1,550 MB/sec write.

Moving right along, the November 2017 “9to5mac.com" review of the updated Sonnet Fusion showed some progress. It is now loaded with 1TB of storage using a Toshiba OCZ RD400 Gen 3 M.2 NVMe SSD module, along with a PCIe Gen 3 flash controller. Specs published are now 2,600 MB/s read and 1,600 MB/s write. Available either direct from Sonnet or from B&H for about $900. Much quicker than SATA III (limited to 500 MB/s) and USB 3.0 (limited to about 450 MB/s. USB 3.1 is nominally quicker, but slow compared to TB3).

Nowadays, the 2TB Samsung T5 is about the same price, so the cost per GB is narrowing with the added expense of superior throughput the issue.

The arguments go along the lines that if you upgrade the capacity of your internal storage in your MBP, Apple will also charge you an equivalent amount to do so.

But considering the massive heat sink required for a 1TB external SSD drive (to prevent throttling caused by overheating), how prudent can it be to install a 2TB internal SSD in a MBP TB3 rig? And would such a large internal SSD in a MBP be subject to the same heat-induced throttling issues that Sonnet employs in their marketing campaign?

Testing indicates the Sonnet Fusion external SSD can mirror or, in some instances, even exceed the performance of the internal MBP SSD drives.

The historic funky behavior of Apple’s own “Fusion” drives certainly mucks up the water. And Sonnet itself still sells parts for RAID array spinners with the Fusion moniker.

The Sonnet Fusion TB3 is very fast, but it not only requires a TB3 computer (such as MBP late 2016 or newer...the 27" 2017 5K iMac also has TB3 ports), it needs a current OS. To use a PC with TB3 requires Thunderbolt bus driver 16.3.61.275 or newer. Minimum Mac OS is 12.6. Minimum Windows 10 revision is 1703 (creator's update, April 2018 version is now 1803). The High Sierra 13.2 update fixed an issue with the initial low level format which previously required a work-around: drive is shipped unformatted.

There are other, more expensive, external SSDs that have more capacity, but require a separate power supply. The Sonnet includes a fixed, but replaceable, TB3 cable. The SSD is not upgradable: it is precisely engineered for cooling efficiency.