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Can you buy Lightning hard drive enclosures?
- Thread starter jbrown
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Stupid naming on Apple's part. How they can apply 'Lightning' to anything that's going to be plugged into a USB port is beyond me.
Anyway... I'm not aware of a single disk TB enclosure but I'm sure they must exist, at a price. If you compare the prices of the TB and non-TB versions of Lacie products you'll see that there's a big ole premium on the TB interface.
Anyway... I'm not aware of a single disk TB enclosure but I'm sure they must exist, at a price. If you compare the prices of the TB and non-TB versions of Lacie products you'll see that there's a big ole premium on the TB interface.
Reading this it appears that they're effectively the same speed when using a 7200rpm hard disk, because the limiting factor is actually the disk itself.
The Delock 42490 is the only single drive 2.5" Thunderbolt enclosure I am aware of. I have been using it as my boot drive with a 500GB Samsung 840 EVO SSD for the past month and love it. It is about $108 at Amazon US without a cable. It is really well-constructed, lightweight aluminum and AC powered.
Seagate makes the bus-powered STAE128 sled, but that's not an enclosure.
Seagate makes the bus-powered STAE128 sled, but that's not an enclosure.
i'd like to put my 2.5" 2TB drive in a lightning enclosure.
Who sells them?
cheers
If I were you I would first get a CalDigit Thunderbolt Station. Then get a cheaper USB 3 enclosure (it would have to be self powered).
Better yet get a home NAS like the Synology D412+. This video will better explain this NAS Server:
One caveat is use server drives like the WD Red TB NAS drives.
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Why would anyone get a Caldigit Thunderbolt Station just to use a USB 3 enclosure that they could connect directly to the Mac in the first place? That is not to mention that the Caldigit is more than twice the price of the Delock Thunderbolt enclosure and then you add in the price of the USB 3 enclosure.
Incidentally, if you are looking for an excellent and inexpensive USB 3 enclosure, I recommend the $18 Inateck FEU3NS-1E UASP enclosure.
Why would anyone get a Caldigit Thunderbolt Station just to use a USB 3 enclosure that they could connect directly to the Mac in the first place? That is not to mention that the Caldigit is more than twice the price of the Delock Thunderbolt enclosure and then you add in the price of the USB 3 enclosure.
Maybe because it has Thunderbolt passthrough!
this is the only solution for thunderbolt i recommend as well.
but only for ssd and/or only if u don't have a free usb 3 port.
usb3 2.5" enclosures are higher performing than this particular delock thunderbolt enclosure. a higher performing alternative would be a pegasus j4 but i can not recommend it as it needs a driver.
i highly advise against anything that needs a driver.
or a nas.
they exist as a firewire alternative for windows computers. they are expensive, noisy and slow.
my personal pick is the thinnest 2.5" usb3 enclosure u can find (such as silverstone ts10) with the biggest ssd u can afford. (for example 1tb 840 evo)
My own benchmarks show this to be true (link above to Inateck enclosure), but it is a very slight edge in performance. At any rate, this was more than compensated for by the lack of ability to use TRIM or flash firmware on the SSD due to USB 3 not recognizing it as a SATA device and that led me to choose Thunderbolt.
I agree that if you're using a HD then there is no reason to go for the Delock at all. I also only recommend it for an SSD.
The question about USB3 vs TB for 2.5 inch drives (in particular, single SSD) is rather interesting.
Here is something worth a read from about a year ago.
http://www.barefeats.com/hard161.html
http://www.barefeats.com/hard168.html
I am not promoting the particular item discussed but at the same time I can say it really is impressive (based on hands on use). The real point is that USB3 under some instances can be a worthy competitor with TB1 (especially considering the price differential on most enclosures).
Here is something worth a read from about a year ago.
http://www.barefeats.com/hard161.html
http://www.barefeats.com/hard168.html
I am not promoting the particular item discussed but at the same time I can say it really is impressive (based on hands on use). The real point is that USB3 under some instances can be a worthy competitor with TB1 (especially considering the price differential on most enclosures).
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