[Discuss] External M.2 SSD

[kentborg at borg.org (Kent Borg)]

So I bought a Sabrent USB-C enclosure, and a 2048GB Intel M.2 SSD to go 
inside (amazingly cheap, if you ask me).

Per my earlier vow, before using it I am filling it with random data. 
(To make the encrypted result a little more secure, but really just to 
make sure it works.) So far it is only going at ~250 MB/s, but I have 
other stuff going on at the same time (a dedup pass over a card in my 
micro SD slot, and am rsync link-dest backup to a spinning media disk 
connected to a different USB-C jack).

Half a TB in... and it is getting hot! No, not (yet) hot enough to burn 
me. Just so long as I don't hold it too tight for too long. I can see 
why they made it an aluminum enclosure and not plastic.

...

It finished, dd reported the speed got as high as 262MB/s, but then it 
fell, I was pleased to see that, I am assuming it was temperature 
throttled, because by then it was *very* hot, it needed to control that. 
Maybe it could handle that temperature, but it was dangerous to touch at 
that point.

I then did my rsync-based backup, it seemed to work. I unmounted it, 
unplugged it, plugged it in again, entered the passphrase again, and did 
another (mostly no-op this time) backup and it took roughly 10-minutes, 
which is about a third of what spinning media does in that case.

Why so long to do mostly nothing? I have a new directory, with the 
complete directory structure for my computer. Overwhelmingly hardlinks 
to existing files, but that still takes time to figure out and write.

The fact the second backup completed without complaint indicates the 
first data could be read, I conclude the new device works.


I think I am going to like this, nice that it is so small, thanks to 
whomever suggested it.

-kb