HAHAHA wow I was an investment banker for a year and still I made such a horrendous mistake, thanks for correcting me (and in such a polite manner, especially for the internet!!!)
But your point about an enclosure vs drive...what difference does an enclosure make? Is it the whole SATA thingy? I must confess I dont understand that stuff..
Sorry for taking so long to respond.
Here is what I meant by the LaCie being an enclosure. When you buy a LaCie drive you are getting a complete external hard drive: plug-and-play, no problems. My point is that LaCie does not make the hard drives (or SSDs) inside of the metal housing.
So think about something like a
WD Passport: it's a WD drive wrapped up in plastic with a mini-USB cable for power and data transfer. Well, something like the
LaCie P'9220 is pretty much the same thing (it may actually have a faster drive, not sure about that though), in a much more attractive, metal housing. If you have the extra money I think LaCie is a great choice because they are more attactive, and unlike the passport, the drives can actually be swapped out (check some place like YouTube to see exactly how to do this).
But to more fully answer you initial question, here are a few things to consider.
- Do you need/want this drive to be bus-powered (only having one cable rather than a data cable and a separate power cable)? 3.5" external drives require separate power, 2.5" (whether HDD or SDD) do not. You'll get more storage for your money with the 3.5" but the 2.5" are more attractive/convenient.
- What are you using this for, backup or on-hand storage? If you are planning to use this all the time (always stays plugged into your computer and you run files off of it) then you'll probably want to focus on getting a good speed: SSD would be your best choice. However, if you plan to use it for backup, you can get a lot more storage for your money with an HDD. SSD speeds are really needed for your host drive (the one with the OS and apps), not necessarily needed for your music collection -- which doesn't make it a bad choice, just saying you can get more for your money in HDD at this point.
- Thunderbolt vs USB 3. I'll tell you right out: I have not yet bought a Thunderbolt drive of any kind. I'm going to in the future when it becomes a more reasonable option, but at this point it doesn't add up for me. I have been running a lot of my stuff on non-Apple PCs which all support USB 3. When I get my new iMac I will continue running everything on USB 3 for at least a year or so (or until Thunderbolt prices drop). Don't be seduced by benchmarks and theoretical limits: real world usage is the key. I love the idea behind Thunderbolt, and at some point I'll get a RAID setup that can really use the bandwidth, but until then, I'm fine with having my file transfers take 10% longer. (Of course, if you are planning on doing something like edit HD video from an external, I would recommend Thunderbolt... or you could just transfer the files over to an internal SSD and edit them from there. )
Sorry if I rambled on, or repeated something that someone else had already posted.