TerraMaster D1 SSD Plus enclosure review: Fast, shiny, cool DIY storage

Best Prices Today: TerraMaster D1 SSD Plus

TerraMaster’s radiator-finned, all-aluminum D1 SSD Plus looks cool, and runs cool. It’s performance lends much credence to the theory that thermal design is important when it comes to high-speed external storage, or for that matter — high-speed storage in general.

A lack of thermal throttling may or may not be why the D1 SSD Plus outperformed the competition, but given past experience with great thermal designs, I reckon it just might’ve factored in.

Either way, it’s a fantastic, if pricey external USB4 enclosure.

Read on to learn more, then see our roundup of the best external drives for comparison.

What are the D1 SSD Plus’s features?

The D1 SSD Plus is a striking-looking, all-aluminum enclosure featuring the 40GBps USB4 protocol, with a single M.2 NVMe slot inside with thermal compound strips included. It measures approximately 4.4-inches long, by 2.25-inches wide, by 1.25-inches thick/high. Weight is just shy of 9 ounces, which feels pretty hefty at the size.

A two-piece clamshell, the halves of the silver enclosure are held together by two tabs and a single captive screw — a rather tiny screw, which makes it a good thing that it’s captive.

On the other hand, the D1’s method for holding the M.2 NVMe SSD in the enclosure is an old-fashioned non-captive screw. That stands out when the trend in enclosures seems to favor captive plastic or rubber retention methods.

The yin and yang? A screw is more secure and less likely to break, but it’s also more easily lost. I’ve sent any number of the little buggers scurrying across my hardwood floors. Solution? I’ve learned to be much more careful and do the work on a soft towel or blanket which will capture it before it escapes.

How much does the D1 SSD Plus cost?

Alas, you won’t find the D1 SSD Plus in or anywhere near the bargain bin. At $110 it’s one of the pricier enclosures I’ve tested, certainly more expensive than the competing Ugreen CM850 shown in the charts.

But given the specs, the all-aluminum design, and the decidedly superior performance, I can’t help but consider the extra moola worthwhile.

How fast is the D1 SSD Plus?

Short answer: very. Given that I populated the the Ugreen CM850 with the same, extremely fast Samsung 9100 Pro SSD, I wasn’t expecting the D1 SSD Plus to spank it in our real-world copies as it did. I ran those tests more than the usual number of times to verify the results. Lack of thermal throttling? Again, could be.

The Adata SE920 comes pre-populated and is thrown into the mix to show that positive things can happen when you roll your own external storage with a very fast SSD.

The synthetic benchmarks were exceptionally close between the TerraMaster and Ugreen, with the Adata very close behind.

It’s the fins, baby!

The CrystalDiskMark 8 4K results were nearly equal between all three competitors. Indeed, NVMe technology is so much faster than even 40Gbps, or even 80Gbps USB4/5 and Thunderbolt 4/5, that it tends to bump right up against those transfer protocols’ ceilings.

But the D1 SSD Plus sustained throughput so well that it gained a decisive advantage in our real-world transfers. To the point that I’m beginning to wonder exactly how much thermal throttling goes on with your average vanilla enclosure. After all the OWC 1M2 with its similarly finned design is also faster than most generic enclosures.

Note that Windows 11 242H seems to have flatlined transfer speeds, at least with our new testbed, so these transfer tests are closer than they used to be. As such, they’re no longer a true indication of potential performance.

Also, you may notice that the Xcopy (Command prompt) tests are significantly faster and far closer to what the synthetic benchmarks say are possible. Microsoft seems to have optimized these for NVMe while leaving Explorer outdated.

Here’s where the difference between the D1 SSD Plus and the Ugreen CM850 really showed up — the aforementioned spanking. Note that the SE920 was only 2TB whereas the Samsung 9100 Pro used in the others was 4TB. This might’ve worked against the Adata SE920 in such a long copy, but other 2TB SSDs have turned in far faster times.

All told, the D1 SSD Plus outperformed the competition. Sometimes marginally, sometimes substantially. If you want the fasted USB4 enclosure I’ve tested, this is it. It’s the fins, baby!

Should you buy the D1 SSD plus?

Personally, I find the D1 SSD Plus attractive, but the look might not strike everyone the same way. That said, it is fast as all get-out and there’s absolutely zero chance that you will ever overheat the SSD inside. Worth the money? I say yea.

How we test

Drive tests currently utilize Windows 11 24H2, 64-bit running off of a PCIe 4.0 Samsung 990 Pro in an Asus Z890-Creator WiFi (PCIe 4.0/5.0) motherboard. The CPU is a Core Ultra i5 225 feeding/fed by two Kingston Fury 32GB DDR5 4800MHz modules (64GB of memory total). Both 20Gbps USB and Thunderbolt 5 are integrated and Intel CPU/GPU graphics are used. SSDs involved in the test are mounted in a HighPoint 7604A 16x PCIe 5.0 adapter card.

We run the CrystalDiskMark 8, AS SSD 2, and ATTO 4 synthetic benchmarks to find the storage device’s potential performance, then a series of 48GB and 450GB transfers tests using Windows Explorer drag and drop to show what you’ll see under Window, as well as the far faster Xcopy to show what’s possible.

The 48GB transfer tests utilize an USFMount RAM disk taking up 58GB of the 64GB of total memory. The 450GB file is transferred from another SSD on the HighPoint card.

Each test is performed on a newly NTFS-formatted and TRIM’d drive so the results are optimal. Note that in normal use, as a drive fills up, performance may decrease due to less NAND for secondary caching, as well as other factors. This can be less of a factor with the current crop of SSDs with far faster late-generation NAND.

Caveat: The performance numbers shown apply only to the drive we were shipped and to the capacity tested. SSD performance can and will vary by capacity due to more or fewer chips to shotgun reads/writes across and the amount of NAND available for secondary caching. Vendors also occasionally swap components. If you ever notice a large discrepancy between the performance you experience and that which we report, by all means, let us know.

Best Prices Today: TerraMaster D1 SSD Plus