Question Most Important NVME Drive specs for USB Enclosure? - Strictly for constant Macrium PC backups - monthly write and delete old

[sparkuss]

I have a few 2TB PCI-E 3.0 NVME drives in Sabrent USB Enclosures that I use to do monthly Macrium backup and Windows Updates for 5 PC. All PC are standalone with no option for networking.

2 of the PC (grand-kids gaming) are getting very large backups and I want to invest in 4TB drive to avoid having to move backups around constantly for space on the 2TB drives.

I am unable to separate their games and OS until I update their PC with new MB with more Storage options.

I had thought to look at the WD RED NAS edition M.2 drives for lower cost but they appear to not have a large Cache and reviews gave them lower marks when writing after the cache fills.

Can anyone please offer suggestions on which metric is most important for my use case - want fastest write speeds w/o throttling for Macrium Backups - Constant deletion of old backups may need good Trim constants (does Win10/11 perform at delete file?).

Actual Drive suggestions welcome as well - looking for price to performance but willing to make up front cost if it ensures long term quickness and reliability vs throttling

 

[Tech Junky]

a few 2TB PCI-E 3.0 NVME drives

Since you have the storage already why not build yourself a "NAS" and do backups over your network? Sure, it's not as fast as a local backup but, you can trigger it to check for changes frequently.

I have mine setup using a PC / Linux and backup the OS to the storage array using rsync / cron. I run the box 24/7 though as a router as well so, uptime is a priority. Losing the OS wouldn't be a huge issue to just redo it from the ground up but having a backup to dump onto a new drive makes it easier.

Being that you're using NVME drives though means finding a MOBO that supports multiple drives or using an AMD setup w/ a bifurcation card that slots multiple drives onto it. You can get a 4 socket card for ~$100 that works with AMD CPU's. On the Intel side a card doing the same thing $180.

Starting out with a SFF PC for ~$200 and the card above gives you a powerful setup for backing up things.

 

[sparkuss]

Sorry should have specified, these are all standalone PC in another location from me. They are connected by Ethernet from EERO WiFi in each separate room using Cable ISP.

Home network not foreseeable in any future time frame.

Backups are going from machine to machine to start Macrium then moving to next.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 4TB M.2 NVMe SSD Review: Bus-Saturating Performance in Style

Sabrent’s Rocket 4 Plus shatters write records and undercuts Samsung and WD pricing

www.tomshardware.com

Steady state performance is good.

Sabrent’s 4TB Rocket 4 Plus is a writing monster. It wrote 1.12TB of data at 6.8 GBps before degrading to an average write speed of 1.8 GBps. After writing a total of 2.2TB of data, the Rocket 4 Plus’s write speed degraded once more, to 1.1GBps, for the remainder of the test. The SLC cache recovered very quickly — roughly 450GB within just a minute of idle time. However, to unlock this fast performance, we had to use a heatsink and two 120mm fans blowing on the SSD to keep it from throttling while absorbing the large write workload.

 

[sparkuss]

Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 4TB M.2 NVMe SSD Review: Bus-Saturating Performance in Style

Sabrent’s Rocket 4 Plus shatters write records and undercuts Samsung and WD pricing

www.tomshardware.com

Steady state performance is good.

Thanks. I'll have to look at that, the heat though may be an issue for the USB enclosure. And I'm not sure if my Sabrent enclosures are PCIe-4 rated.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Thanks. I'll have to look at that, the heat though may be an issue for the USB enclosure. And I'm not sure if my Sabrent enclosures are PCIe-4 rated.

A simpler way is to remove the cover when you are doing the backups and put it back on when you put it away until the next time it's needed.

PCIe 3.0 will still hit around 3500 MB/s. The limiting factor may be the enclosure controller if it can handle that much speed.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Constant deletion of old backups may need good Trim constants (does Win10/11 perform at delete file?).

Split the 4TB drive into two partitions. Instead of deleting old backups, format the partition containing it, which will ensure full performance is restored for that partition and alternate between the two partitions.

You can use CrystalDiskMark's 1GB sequential test to check performance level. If it's significantly down for a partition, copy the needed backups to the other partition and then format the slower one to restore performance.

 

[Tech Junky]

PCIe-4

Afaik no enclosure does gen 4 because of port limitations. Drives will work at the slower speed of the controller and port you use them on.

I can get 3.1/2.8GB/s on TB4 using a sn770 though. Unless you make them internal to a PC they won't see full speed. That should change though with TB5 which doubles the bandwidth.