Best hub with SSD for Mac mini M4 Raycue and NVMe vs SSD

I find the Raycue ports unreliable ( I do have added power to the hub). Using the Raycue ports for printer or backup drive resulted in them being disconnected regularly. I only use them as charging for phone, iPad etc.

Most of the hubs that fit above or below a mini are not self-powered and tend to be temperamental, often ejecting disks frequently.

Much cheaper and better are the "power-strip" type hubs so long as you get one with a power supply.

NVMes are faster (and more expensive) than SSDs but in normal usage you will never notice any difference except when copying massive (50GB plus) files. Don't get seduced by reading the speeds or you will end up disappointed and poorer!

mandarcy wrote:

Also what's the difference between a normal SSD and NVME?

SSD stands for solid state drive. SSDs use flash memory – the same as memory cards, and USB flash drives - but typically use higher-grade, faster flash memory than the cheaper flash-based storage devices do.

NVMe is not an alternative to SSD, but an alternative to SATA. SATA is a slower interface and PCIe NVMe (or NVMe) is a faster one. How much faster will depend in part on the enclosure. A Thunderbolt 3 or USB4 40 Gbps enclosure can support a higher data rate than a less expensive USB 3.1 Gen 2 one.

With a SATA SSD, a USB 3.1 Gen 2 enclosure might only have a small advantage over a USB 3.0 one, and since SATA SSDs are aimed at budget shoppers, most of them come in USB 3.0 enclosures.

I have the Raycue which has faster ports than other similar docks. I use a wd nvme drive. Dock works well. It also has a power input port if additional power is required. I found the included usb-c cable suspect so I Used a short TB cable to connect dock to Mac TB port

I bought the 40Gbps RayCue Hub for my Mac Mini M4, and it’s been mostly great! The speed is up to 3300Mb/s, especially for tasks like video editing or large file transfers. The design fits seamlessly with my Mac Mini, and it’s very reliable for SSD performance,but It has fewer USB ports and lacks HDMI or card reader support, which the 10Gbps version offers.

mandarcy wrote:

Aah I see so NVMe is just the connection bus? Those hubs I've seen connect to the Mac via a port on the back (Thunderbolt?) so I guess you wouldn't get the full speed of NVMe anyway would you?

It depends on the particulars of the case. There are some M.2 PCIe NVMe SSDs whose theoretical maximum speed exceeds what Thunderbolt 3, Thunderbolt 4, and USB4 40 Gbps can support. But connecting external NVMe SSDs by one of those three methods will usually get you speeds similar to what internal ones were for a long time.

Thunderbolt 5 can offer twice the bandwidth of Thunderbolt 3 and 4 – if both the Mac and the drive support it.

Macs do not support USB 3.2 Gen 2x2. Drives using it will fall back to (at most) USB 3.1 Gen 2 speed on a Mac.

Even a USB-C (USB 3.1 Gen 2) / NVMe SSD might be about

• Twice as fast as a USB / SATA SSD
• Eight times as fast as a mechanical hard drive with a USB 3 (or better) interface, which itself would still be fast enough to hold your Photos, Music, and TV libraries

when it came to sequential access speed.

Do you really need extra ports? The M4 mini has 5 so what are you going to plug in especially if you have a wireless/Bluetooth mouse and keyboard.

A cheap 2TB SSD/NVMe (Crucial, Kingston etc.) can be bought for £100 and a USB 3.0 enclosure will add another £10 from Amazon.

The speeds will only be USB 3.0 but that is more than enough for most activities including 4K video editing.

I'm using the 1TB version of this Crucial SSD. You will also need a USB 3.0 enclosure for it costing between £5 - £10.

Crucial 2TB SSD

You simply push the SSD into the enclosure (like changing the batteries on a remote!) and plug it in.

Make sure you get an enclosure with a USB-C connecter or adapter unless your hub has normal USB-A ports.

The Raycue is a nice hub, however there is one big omission, that is a small cut out for the M4s power button, have a look at the SATECHI m4 Mac mini dock, and you will see what I mean.

Also, it does not have any Thunderbird ports, like the older OWC Mac Mini hub had.

OWC have not released a hub for the M4 yet, but I expect they will soon, I wish I had waited.

This is the cutout on the SATECHI hub.

I have this EasyULT which has a USB-A cable with a USB-C adapter so you can plug it into either type.

EasyULT Enclosure

They may or may not achieve the full speed but don't get fixated by it as the speed will have no effect on anything you do other than copying massive files (which I rarely do) and a few seconds longer is not going to make any difference.

Even an "old-fashioned" USB 3.0 HDD has all the speed necessary for editing 4K videos etc.

Super-speeds sound impressive but that's all it is . . . a bit of a party trick unless you are a busy professional copying Terabytes of data daily where time is money.

I have also got a Crucial 1TB NVMe in a Thunderbolt enclosure.

The only downside is the cost . . . the NVMe was about the same as the SSD mentioned but the enclosures are extremely more expensive.

Whilst you can get USB enclosures for under £10 most Thunderbolt enclosures are around £100 . . . I was lucky to get one for £70.

It's extremely fast . . . faster than the internal SSD and it looks great on the Black Magic Disk Speed Test but it isn't any better in day to day editing than my USB SSD.

I know it's faster but was it worth it? Probably not!

Irrespective of which accessory chosen be careful the Mac mini M4 has limited power capacity from its Thunderbolt ports and virtually none from the front USB C ports. If stressed it will shut off any port drawing too much power. The M4 Pro's Thunderbolt 5 ports are a bit more robust just by their design spec's. So if you can afford one choose a Powered Hub.

If you're not in a hurry to get one, this would be worth considering:

https://satechi.net/landing/new-stand-and-hub-m4-mac-mini

Regards.

you can get usb-c to usb-a adaptors pretty cheap though, so if it's just that you have older usb-a stuff then you may not need a hub at all

Amazon.com : usb-c to usb-a