External drive for a budget

Hello everyone!

Recently i have bought late MBP 15, which has 256 SSD drive.
I have to say it works really-really fast and i am absolutely satisfied with workflow.

Nevertheless now i have to choose an external drive option.
I am looking for a 1TB (or more) under 270$ solution.

Looked through NewerTech miniStack, NewerTech Voyager SATA, OWC Mercury Elite Pro mini, OWC Mercury Elite pro, LaCie d2 Quadra (tons of negative reviews), G-RAID Mini, G-DRIVE mini, Glyph Technologies Studio Mini and lots of others.

I don't know what speed (100 mb read? 200 mb read? 300?) should an hdd run to be able to stream audio (sample libraries) without problems.

I am out of buck, so SSD is not possible solution.
Thunderbolt or USB 3.0 is not a big deal, but thunderbolt is pref.

Commy1 said:

I just got a Western Digital Ultra 2TB My Passport in the mail. Requires no power sources, very quick USB 3.0, small small small body.
The software that can be installed on your machine are pretty useful as well, not bloatware on any level.
Picked up the 2TB for $139, I believe they offer 1TB and 500GB as well for less obviously.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice,

The problem is that My Passport is 5400 rpm, and i think write/read speed no more than 100 mb/s. That is good choice to store data, but for streaming and recording audio right on HD will not work well. As well as loading samples from it.