Oyen DigitalU34 Bolt 4TB (USB4 40Gbps) NVMe Thunderbolt 4 (USB-C) Portable SSD, Up to 2800MB/s

I just got the drive (8TB U34 Bolt) , reformatted it to APFS.I used the cable that came in the box (although I bought another one just in case, a dedicated tb4 cable as I read it might be slow with the original cable.)Used black magic to test the speed and wow!Write 3083 read 2897 !!!!Now I need to see how it works when actually using it, I bought it to backup a MacBook Pro Max 16” 8TB (128Gb RAM).But really impressed with the speed.I wish 8TB NVME would be cheaper but I guess you get what you pay for and my other option was to get a WD SN850X 8TB NVmE and put it in an enclosure, would have probably cost 200 less but WD said they can’t guarantee it would work, although it should but it needs to be connected to a motherboard.I don’t want to take any risks and the casing on this U34 feels solid.

I have the 2tb version and it's connected to the thunderbolt port of a mac mini M4 pro. Photo of the speed test attached, because I would not have believe it. Insane. This thing is ridiculously fast. Definitely pro level on a budget and most certainly worth the money. Yes, a T7 will give you amazing everyday speeds and yes, it's ALL dependent on the connection and the OS speed, but if you want blazing, future proof speed, this is it.

Best legit Thunderbolt 3 drive on the market. Fast AF as well.

SuperfastNo noiseHigh quality

I have a new Mac Studio computer that has 4 real Thunderbolt4 ports, yet finding an external drive with a Thunderbolt4 is difficult to find. I did not want a Thunderbolt 3. I needed a 4TB external drive and this company had 2TB and 8TB on sale but not the 4TB. I would have loved the 8TB but it was expensive and overkill. I could not wait so I went ahead and bought the 4TB anyway. I am using it now for my Time Machine backups as my Time Machine had told me a 2TB USC drive I had was too small. I would not have needed a Thunderbolt 4 for Time Machine so if I later get a USB-C drive in 4TB I could use that for Time Machine and keep this drive for my photos and such. It was very fast doing a full first time, Time Machine backup. I am very pleased with it. It had good reviews but a couple mentioned how big it is. It’s not tiny but still small, about the size of a deck of cards, maybe slightly thicker because of the rubber bumpers on it to protect it, but in no way big! My Thunderbolt ports are on the back of my computer and I just sit this behind next to my ports. I am thrilled with the drive just wish the 4TB would have been on sale as well.

The drive looks well built and also very fast. I trusted the positive reviews... Problem is that it lasted only 3 days.. from my standpoint utterly unreliable. The problem happened when I was writing some metadata on some pictures and suddenly the drive locked itself in read mode. The drive can still be mounted and the data previously written on the disk is readable but only in read mode. Impossible to delete any file, to format or erase any partition also at low level because the drive report I/O errors. So I find myself in the situation where I have 350G of sensitive material that cannot be erased before returning and at the same time the drive cannot be used anymore because all writing is blocked due to the I/O errors. Support didn't have any tool to do an internal diagnosis of the drive, just suggested, low level partitioning from Windows or Linux with Parted Magic which works as a dedicated bootable Linux distribution that I did but with no success as the HW failed. I would never trust it for any serious workload.

Woah this thing is fast! It's still 30-50% slower thanTested on my MBP M2 Max and a Mac Studio M1 using 5GB (large file) setting using blackmagic's testing tool (avail. on the app store). The picture is the MBP but about same results for the Studio (though note that you have to use the ports at the back; the ones at the front only allow transfer up to a little over 300Mbps)Cable is provided (that's important). The drive comes formatted as HFS+.First screenshot is with the original HFS+ partition, second is after re-formating as APFS. HFS is for compatibility with older MacOS pre-Sierra and is less optimal for SSDs, especially for smaller files. Also while APFS is not PC-compatible, neither is HFS so there is little to gain for keeping it as HFS for the regular Mac user.Other big plus: the drive is small (basically the part not covered by the rubber thing in the middle is slightly smaller than a credit card in surface, so the whole thing is just a nudge wider than a credit card) and relatively thin. Fits in a jeans pocket like a pretty full wallet would (not that I would carry it like that, but it means it fits easily in a front pocket of a backpack)NOTE:External SSDs have a bad tendency of failing (just bought this after my Kingston failed within 6mo - granted manufacturer warranty is good for 3 years for these type of devices) so will come back in ~6mo to confirm everything is fine.

Thunderbolt cable that came with the box has 36mb/s speeds. Once I swapped it with another thunderbolt 3 cable I got up to the advertised 2800mb/s.