USB Type C enclosure for SATA SSD, will this improve read/write speeds?

[rav007]

Hello

 

I have a Samsung 840 SSD which I salvaged from my old laptop, sadly I have no room for it in my new laptop as I have 2tb HDD and 960gb SATA SSD in there. But I just came here from watching a couple of LTT videos and it got me thinking. As USB type C can transfer at 10Gbps and SATA3 is limited to 6Gbps, the videos said that SSD capabilities surpass SATA's capabilities, the latter being the bottleneck. So if I put my SSD into a USB Type C enclosure, do you think it will be possible to get faster than SATA3 read/write speeds? 

 

My thought process is that although the interface of the drive is still SATA, it isn't transferring data through an on-board SATA connection, it is connected via USB, and I got the impression that the on-board SATA is what caused the bottleneck in transfer speeds. Thoughts? 

 

Thanks

[dany_boy]

No. Your SSD will still communicate with SATA, no matter what enclosure. The video refers to the memory chips and controllers. The memory chips (the ones actually holding data) are capable of better speeds than SATA. The controller however, is designed for SATA and will therefore always limit the SSD to SATA protocol.

Cheers!

[Shiv78]

Even through USB, the SSD itself uses a SATA protocol, so no. Only some kind of NVMe to Thunderbolt 3 adapter would work, and would need a separate NVMe SSD.

 

'USB-C' doesn't increase speeds; but USB 3.1 Gen2 and Thunderbolt 3 DO; they just happen to use a USB Type C connector.

[rav007]

Well that settles that 

[Tech Inquisition]

If the enclosure only supports USB 3.0 or 3.1 Gen 1 then you are limited to the USB 3.0 bandwidth of 5GB/s (less than SATA3 6GB/s), but USB 3.1 Gen 2 connections support up to 10GB/s, so you will only get the max of 6GB/s due to the internal SATA3 interface in the enclosure.

 

So if you want to get the best, make sure it's got a USB 3.1 Gen 2 Micro-B or C connector

[johnno124]

2 minutes ago, Tech Inquisition said:

If the enclosure only supports USB 3.0 or 3.1 Gen 1 then you are limited to the USB 3.0 bandwidth of 5GB/s (less than SATA3 6GB/s), but USB 3.1 Gen 2 connections support up to 10GB/s, so you will only get the max of 6GB/s due to the internal SATA3 interface in the enclosure.

 

So if you want to get the best, make sure it's got a USB 3.1 Gen 2 Micro-B or C connector

its Gb/s not GB/s GB is gigabyte and Gb is Gigibit.

[Tech Inquisition]

On 2/3/2017 at 9:45 AM, johnno124 said:

its Gb/s not GB/s GB is gigabyte and Gb is Gigibit.

O So Sowy... Keebord sheeft stuck...