Is USB 3.1 Gen 2 same as USB 3.2 ?

alpshiker wrote:

Will it use the speed of an external SSD USB 3.2 Gen 2 SSD such as Samsung T7?

Yes the 2018 Mac Mini's USB 3.1 Gen 2 is 10G which is faster than the T7's SSD.

https://support.apple.com/kb/SP782?locale=en_US

If not and since the ports are Thunderbolt, should it be upgradable by firmware update?

There is no firmware that can upgrade or change the Mac Mini's USB 3.1 Gen 2.

If you wanted/needed a faster connection, then you will need a Thunderbolt 3 SSD.

for example > https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/owc-envoy-pro-ex-thunderbolt-3

When you use external drives try to test it with different file system. I have Crucial X8 1Tb, it is in range to Samsung T7 by speed but it does not work well formatted with APFS file system. The slc cache that is used for speed write is full after 80Gb but originally the cache is over 100Gb and when the cache is full slow writes occurred (100mb/sec) and it stays at that slow speed forever until the drive is disconnected. When I formatted it with macOS Extended Journal then it uses full cache over 100Gb and speed recovers to 850mb/s after slow write in just couple of seconds. The same is with ExFat. I was frustrated because I thinked that I buyed faulty drive but the problem was file system used to format it.

I dont know if its the same case for samsung t7 but for crucial x8 it is. I dont have t7 to test it.

Here is a link to tests so you can look at charts to see how big is the cache for t7 and how slow will be writing after it fills the cache so you can make the tests with apfs file system and see if the write speed recovers after a some minutes back to normal or it will just write a couple of gb with full speed and then drops to slow speed again then you test it with HFS+ and see how it behaves with HFS+ file system.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crucial-x8-portable-ssd/2

Here is a "scorecard" to keep track of all the different flavors of

USB3:

BTW, USB 3.1 gen 1 is what was once simply called USB 3

when it superseded USB 2.

You're welcome.