SerpApi.Org
I haven't made the jump to an external SSD. I still use external hard drives to store old backups, movies, shows, images, and videos. External SSDs never really seemed "affordable" enough to me, so I sacrificed the transfer speeds in favor of lower cost per GB. If you're the proud owner of one of the newer external SSDs, boasting 1,000–4,000 MB/s speeds, you might be surprised to know that these blazing-fast speeds require way too many prerequisites. And most people are probably using systems and cables that aren't equipped with the bandwidth needed to deliver these speeds. Your external SSD might feel fast enough to you, but unless you monitor the real-time transfer rate, your drive could be operating at only half its speed, or even worse. External SSDs rated for USB4 need a 40 Gbps connection, which is easy to break if even one link in the entire chain doesn't support the required bandwidth.
Your external SSD is only as fast as the weakest link
The port and the cable are more important than you think
While internal SSDs have reached 15,000 MB/s speeds, external SSDs have only recently breached 6,000 MB/s, that too, on select Thunderbolt 5 drives that barely anyone can run. That said, the 4,000 MB/s speed of USB4 and Thunderbolt 4 drives is no small feat, considering external hard drives max out at around 120 MB/s. Even if your external SSD is slower, capped at around 1,000 MB/s or 2,000 MB/s, you're still holding one of the fastest external drives on the market. Most people can no longer afford to buy one of these, considering the state of storage prices right now. For context, a 2TB Sandisk Extreme Portable SSD rated for 1,050 MB/s is priced at around $300, double what it used to cost eight months ago.
These 1,000 MB/s external drives are plenty fast for copying dozens of gigabytes in no time, but the USB infrastructure they depend on isn't foolproof. Having a fast drive isn't enough; you also need an equally fast (or faster) USB port and the right cable to go with it. Without everything in place, your SSD will fail to reach anywhere close to the speeds advertised on the product page. For instance, the Sandisk drive I mentioned needs at least a USB 3.2 Gen2 port and a cable that's rated for 10 Gbps at a minimum. You can't just plug your SSD into the most convenient USB-A or USB-C port you find on your laptop or PC, expecting it to deliver peak performance.
Even on the right USB port, the cable you're using is often the weakest link, tanking your transfer speeds. Cables not expressly marked for fast data transfer should be avoided when using external SSDs. Using the cable that came with your SSD is the safest bet, or you could buy a 10 Gbps, 20 Gbps, or 40 Gbps cable, as required by your SSD.
Manufacturers have a lot of blame to share
Don't throttle your external SSD out of ignorance
The reason that it's easy to use the wrong USB port or cable is that manufacturers haven't made it easy for consumers. Unlike USB-A ports that are mostly color-coded to indicate bandwidth, USB-C ports aren't as easy to differentiate between. Most external SSDs use USB-C cables, requiring a port and cable that's fast enough to handle the rated transfer speed. USB-C ports aren't always clearly labeled on laptops and the front I/O on desktops. You might wrongly assume that the USB-C ports on one side of your laptop are identical to the ones on the other side, but this is rarely the case. Some of them might only be good enough for power delivery, not high-speed data transfer.
Then, the cables present another problem. Nearly every USB-C cable looks the same, and in the absence of any notation, you can't be sure of the supported bandwidth without testing it yourself. Some USB-C cables are labeled with a lightning bolt, indicating Thunderbolt, or an SS symbol followed by a number indicating the bandwidth. However, this practice isn't universal, with manufacturers often leaving consumers to fend for themselves. This results in consumers choosing a random cable from the stack of unused cables they have at home and using it with their high-speed external drives. Some USB-C cables don't even support data transfer and are intended for display output alone, making the whole cable situation more complex.
Most people don't even know their SSD is running slower than it should
You can't solve a problem you aren't aware of
Unless you managed to label the correct USB-C cable for your SSD, you can't be sure whether you're running your SSD at full speed. If the performance is relatively fast, you might not notice anything wrong at all. Even an older port like USB 3.2 Gen1 can run your external drive at around 400–500 MB/s, which will feel way faster compared to an external hard drive. However, you're actually running our SSD at half the speed, at least. Ensuring you're using the right port and cable is certainly not impossible, but most people might not even know that they need to do that. People using faster drives with 2,000 MB/s speeds need at least a USB 3.2 Gen2x2 port for maximum performance, but they're probably happy with half the speeds on a USB 3.2 Gen2 port.
The tricky thing is that you can't know your system's ports in and out without referring to the manual. Most users, though, aren't doing that when plugging in an external SSD. Using an older port or the ones on the front I/O is a recipe for slashing your SSD speeds. Whether the drop in performance meaningfully affects your use case is immaterial; you're still paying for performance you aren't using.
Most external SSDs are plenty fast, but the wrong port or cable can easily change that
Fast external SSDs have been affordable for many years (present economy excluded), but those impressive transfer speeds hinge on equally fast ports and cables. Without the right USB port and data cable, your SSD won't come close to the speeds you expect. Non-standard nomenclature and inefficient labeling by manufacturers confuse consumers, who give up and use the first thing they can find, tanking their transfer speeds.
