thunderbolt vs usb 3.0

[frozi]

I will be purchasing an external harddrive to store my footage that I edit using Avid.

What have you guys heard has a more sustained performance? The thunderbolt or usb 3.0. I understand they both have high peaks, but I was told even though some might have a high peak, it doesnt mean it will average that speed.

Thoughts on which way I should go?

[simsaladimbamba]

Thunderbolt, as it is aimed at professionals and USB is for consumers. Thunderbolt also has a dedicated chip like Firewire, USB just uses the CPU/chipset for its commands.

[frozi]

Originally Posted by simsaladimbamba

Thunderbolt, as it is aimed at professionals and USB is for consumers. Thunderbolt also has a dedicated chip like Firewire, USB just uses the CPU/chipset for its commands.

g-raid thunderbolt??

I was hoping I could find something around 1-2 tb

[MacBookProzak]

Thunderbolt

[smetvid]

It kind of depends on what you feed it. Both interfaces are designed for pretty fast speeds. If you are talking a single drive then it really doesn't matter. Both ports blow away what a single drive can handle. If it is a small 2 drive raid-0 then still I think they would be pretty close. Two raid-0 physical drives can only go so fast. Thats why I think the single and dual thunderbolt drives out there are a joke. They are currently just as slow as if they had USB3.

Where thunderbolt does shine however is if you daisy chain a lot of single drives. In theory 3 or 4 of these drives hooked together should still run at full speed unlike FW800 which could get cut in half or worse depending on how many drives daisy chained were running at the same time.

[matteusclement]

Originally Posted by smetvid

It kind of depends on what you feed it. Both interfaces are designed for pretty fast speeds. If you are talking a single drive then it really doesn't matter. Both ports blow away what a single drive can handle. If it is a small 2 drive raid-0 then still I think they would be pretty close. Two raid-0 physical drives can only go so fast. Thats why I think the single and dual thunderbolt drives out there are a joke. They are currently just as slow as if they had USB3.

Where thunderbolt does shine however is if you daisy chain a lot of single drives. In theory 3 or 4 of these drives hooked together should still run at full speed unlike FW800 which could get cut in half or worse depending on how many drives daisy chained were running at the same time.

COMPLETELY AGREE. USB3 makes external drives usable for editing.

[jshbckr]

Originally Posted by matteusclement

COMPLETELY AGREE. USB3 makes external drives usable for editing.

I don't know if this is completely true. I know that both USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt exceed the SATA connection speed of the drive (well, USB 3.0 almost does.) but like someone else said, I think the fact that USB 3.0 doesn't have a dedicated chipset like Thunderbolt causes the connection to fluctuate more, which can be bad for video editing. It's basically the same reason why FireWire 400 was better for DV footage back in the day, even though USB 2.0 was 480mbps and technically faster.

[KeithPratt]

Originally Posted by jshbckr

I think the fact that USB 3.0 doesn't have a dedicated chipset like Thunderbolt causes the connection to fluctuate more, which can be bad for video editing.

Blackmagic make several USB3 video I/Os. The connection need to be able to unfailingly pass data at 158MB/s both in and out simultaneously.