ONE SSD for ALL

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by davemartone

Thanks Darryl.

It is the Lacie D2
http://www.cnet.com/products/lacie-d2-thunderbolt-2/
I would imagine then that the internal SSD on the late Imac's are the PCIe/M.2 SSD. I was always searching for that info.. Thank you :)
I had no idea Thunderbolt 2 has IO bottleneck ?

The internal Apple SSD on these iMacs is M.2 form factor but I believe dual PCIe 3.0 lanes not the quad lanes seen in recent Mac Pro or MacBook Pro. A dissapointing decision IMNSHO, just no excuse for that given M.2 quad lane drive availability. But still for your type workloads a great drive compared to SATA HDD or SSD. If all your stuff will fit there within readon just load it up.

The Lacie D2 drive is SATA HDD internally, so slow. It has a M.2 drive option from Lacie but I suspect that is old technology not quad PCIe 3. And I think you are stuck with Lacie's 128GB SSD upgrade as the only choice.

What would be nice is to see more Thuderbolt to M.2 expansion chassis, that let you connect up any M.2 drive like the Samsung 950 Pro. Even if thubderbolt 2 really cannot deliver quad PCIe 3 performance. It would likely need a small cooling fan.

Thubderbolt is nice for some stuff like interfaces but Apple crippling things like the Mac Pro with no PCIe expansion and locking customers into a rapidly churning interface was stupid. I would bdver but a Mac Pro based on that lack of PCIe expansion. One or two $350 950 Pro SSD can drown a Thubderbolt 2 Port. And now Thubderbolt 3 is almost here... with more churn.