As my real projects were getting awfully hectic before the end of the year, I thought I should relax a bit with a fun, nerdy “project.” Since I just purchased the CalDigit TS3+ dock to help clean up my under-desk cable situation, I wanted to check if there were any data transfer improvements as well. I started with two daisy-chained Anker USBA 3 hubs attached to my M1 MBP with an A-to-C cable for most of the peripherals/storage. I also had an Inateck “toaster” style dock for bare drives attached separately to the MBP since it didn’t like to run through the hubs. And with no USBC ports on the hubs, the two SSDs had to plug in via adapters. I can’t comment on the accuracy or frankly the specific value of the numbers that the app measured; I’m more interested in the relative values of the different forms of connection. I ran the tests all at the 1 GB stress level; I. know, I know, 5 GB stress test is better because reasons, but again, I’m really interested in the % change, not the specific value. All the disks are APFS formatted except the bare WD Blue. All speeds are write / read.
| Disk | Direct connect | Anker USBA 3 hub | CalDigit TS3+ | Column 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Internal 1TB SSD | 6951 / 5362 | |||
| Sandisk Extreme 2TB SSD | 795 / 857 | 401 / 360 | 830 / 899 | |
| Crucial X6 1TB SSD | 719 / 667 | 398 / 362 | 718 / 662 | |
| WD Easystore 5TB HDD | 113 / 113 | 114 / 119 | 113 / 117 | |
| WD Elements 2TB HDD | 64 / 102 | 66 / 100 | 64 / 104 | |
| WD Blue 2TB HDD (toaster) | 97 / 97 | 103 / 104 | 104 / 104 | |
| Samsung 860 SVO 1TB SSD (toaster) | 340 / 370 | 322 / 218 | 414 / 421 |