Terramaster D4 SSD Review: Fast NVME, USB4 RAID

With Apple’s pretty expensive and then some internal storage upgrades, you can get much more smell (capacity) for your money with external solutions. Not that 4-drive Terramaster D4 SSD is cheap for $ 300 Sans drives, but even after you add SSDs, it’s much cheaper per day. GB than what Apple charges you. Very. It is also a nicely designed device with good performance.

What are Terramaster D4 SSD’s features?

Terramaster D4 SSD is a 4-castle (M.2/NVME) External Enclosure using the 40 Gbps USB4 protocol. It’s basically Thunderbolt 4, but with better back and forward compatibility than USB3.2 × 2. You can see the interior of the picture below.

D4 SSD measures 5.5 inches deep and high, with approx. 2.35 inches wide. Relatively speaking, it is a featherweight for a desktop drive that weighs in at approx. 14.5 ounces, including SSDs. I would leave it on its side if it is to be placed in any place where people can unintentionally knock it around.

Note the extra screw holes in the picture above. They are there so you can fit shorter NVME SSDs if you want.

I was not in love with the documentation sent with D4, mainly because everything they show you is a picture of screwing a 2280 NVME drive into something that may or may not be D4. Then there are scan codes for apps, etc.

I do not prefer to use my phone in any way form or form to configure or access storage devices. And I didn’t. Setting up D4 SSD is not rocket science. Removing a single thumb screw gives access to the interior, and from there it is simply the usual M.2 installation procedure.

Terramaster definitely did not want the D4 overheating, which you can tell from the two big fans at the bottom of the device.

My only concerns about the D4 SSD is that it is a little easy to turn into the desired vertical orientation. Otherwise it is good job thermaster.

How much is Terramaster D4 SSD?

I have already given away the $ 300 unpopulated price tag, but factoring in current negotiations NVME SSD prices D4 SSD with 4TB will be around $ 600, with 8TB about $ 800 – $ 850, with 16 TB about $ 1300 and with 32 TB approx. $ 2900.

Okay, it seems a little expensive when I last checked, an internal 8TB SSD in a MAX 4 -Study was $ 2400. Ahem.

How fast is Terramaster D4 SSD?

The speed of D4 SSD varies with how to use the SSDs inside. If you use them as individual storage units, you will receive approx. 1.6 – 1.7 Gbps. If you use MacOS’s RAID and combine them in a RAID 0 array, you get up to 3 GB per second.

Note that although I have never been a fan of running hard drives in Pure Raid 0, I do not have the same congestion with far more reliable SSDs.

I tested the D4 SSD on an M4 Mac Studio both using MacOS’s software attack in striped mode 0 and individually. The results were strikingly alike on PCWORD’s test bed, although I have not listed these results because of the very redundancy.

As usual, disk speed tests were far more conservative on its estimation of writing speed than Amorphous Disco and Atto. 2.2 GBPS WRITING AND 3.3 GBPS READING.

Amorphous Diskmark measured D4 SSD in RAID 0 at 3.85 Gbps reading and almost 3.1 Gbps writing.

ATTO had read speeds that maximized at about 3.75 Gbps, and writing speeds are 2.9 Gbps.

All of the synthetic benchmarks agreed on about 1.5-1.6 Gbps reading and writing when the SSDs inside D4 SSD are used individually.

This time, Amorphous Diskmark agrees with disk speed tests.

And so does Atto. About 1.5 Gbps with large files.

All in all, we were more than happy with D4 SSD’s performance.

Should you buy Terramaster D4 SSD?

Although I would like it to be a little more affordable, D4 ​​SSD is still a good way to add a ton of quick NVME storage to your system. I am Sanguin about SSD life, so I wouldn’t even say to run it in the mirror mode for storage. Apart from, always back up your important data.