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Will that hub or dock slow your SSDs, or even make them faster?

How to connect a USB4 SSD to get better performance from an Intel Mac. Should you buy a Thunderbolt 4 hub, or a Thunderbolt 5 dock? Do any of these live ‘up to’ their claimed performanc…

This was reported in System Information as being at 20 Gb/s, and is the first time I have seen any peripheral connected to a Mac operating at that transfer rate. That led to a reduction in read speeds of the USB4 SSD from 3.2-3.5 GB/s when connected directly to an Apple silicon Mac, to 2.9 GB/s when accessed through the TB4 hub. This is a catastrophic effect for which I can offer no explanation, despite demonstrating it on several different occasions with the same combination of host port, dock and SSD.

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