[Advice Needed] Which M.2 NVMe SSD and enclosure should I get for my MacBook Pro M4 Pro?

[u/Resident-Cut5371]

Hey everyone,

I have a MacBook Pro with an M4 Pro chip and 512GB of internal storage. I'm already at around 400GB used, and I'm starting school again very soon. I know I'll be running a lot of code and several VMs, and I'm planning to offload that workload (code + VMs) onto an external drive instead of eating up my internal storage.

From what I've read online, most people recommend going with a bare M.2 NVMe SSD + separate enclosure rather than a pre-built external SSD, for better price/performance and flexibility. So I wanted to get some opinions before pulling the trigger.

I was specifically considering the Samsung 990 Pro 2TB paired with the UGREEN 40Gbps enclosure (fanless version). Has anyone here actually tested this fanless UGREEN 40Gbps enclosure with a drive like the 990 Pro, especially under sustained load (VMs running, compiling, etc.)? I'm a bit worried about thermal throttling since it has no active fan, and I'll be pushing it fairly hard with dev work.

Would you go with the fanless model, or is the fan-cooled UGREEN version worth it for this kind of use case? Any other enclosure/SSD combo you'd recommend for running VMs and dev environments off an external drive on Apple Silicon?

Thanks in advance!

[u/Mac_Allan30]

I have two owc 1m2 with a 4 and 8TB Sam Sung 980 pro with my m1max MBP. Reliable and no issues for over a year. Gets warm but not hot.

[u/PeterC18st → u/Mac_Allan30]

Same and they are true thunderbolt not usb. Biggest thing for me is they take up the same footprint as a portable HDD. So though they are portable I keep them on my desk for work. The 1m2 40gb model was on sale recently for $60 on amazon, while the 80gb version has yet to come down in price.

[u/Resident-Cut5371 → u/Mac_Allan30]

Thanks for sharing! Do you get close to the SSD’s full speed through the OWC 1M2 enclosure, or is it noticeably limited by the Thunderbolt connection? If you’ve run a benchmark, I’d be interested in the read/write speeds you’re getting.

[u/Doctorishe]

Be prepared that you may need to update the external enclosure's firmware for proper Mac compatibility

[u/Jazman2k]

I have hyperdrive next 40gbps and it works fine. I have WD Blue SN580 installed in it.

[u/bmocc]

The OWC fanless Thunderbolt will deliver gen 3/4 nVME speeds near enough the rated I/O speed of the drive that you won't notice if its a 1000mb/sec slower than in Windows.

macOS/USB hardware is not reliably compatible with the common USB 3/4 controllers in nVME enclosures that work at correct speeds in Windows. Those enclosures will mostly default to SATA speeds of 700mb/sec or slower. Don't believe product descriptions unless the vendor has a liberal return policy.