Seagate Backup Plus Thunderbolt with SSD

Blue Jakester said:

One of the posters in that thread is using this wall powered enclosure and I think I'll go this route. Thanks again.

http://www.memorydepot.com/42490.htm

Click to expand...

FYI, that site says "Usually ships within 3-4 weeks"

Also, I have a Samsung 750GB 840 EVO inside OWC's Mercury On-The-Go Pro Thunderbolt enclosure (which they stupidly sell bundled with a 5400 RPM HDD), so you can run at least up to that off TB bus power...

Blue Jakester said:

I've done some searching and reading both here and Google but haven't found the answer. I also read the specs for the Seagate Backup Plus Thunderbolt at Seagate.com but didn't find the answer.

I'm trying to determine if the Seagate Backup Plus Thunderbolt like this one at Amazon.com will work with an SSD larger than 512GB.

I'd like to put a Crucial 960GB SSD in the Backup Plus Thunderbolt adapter and connect it to my mid 2011 iMac 27 to use as my system and storage drive in place of the internal HDD. I'd then use SuperDuper to backup the SSD to the internal HDD in case of a failure.

Any advice on the max capacity SSD I could use would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Click to expand...

I have "bricked" two Crucial M4 512GB SSDs using two different bus-powered Seagate Thunderbolt Adapters in the past, probably due to high power spikes which the hard-disk designed Seagate probably couldn't handle (they don't sell a GoFlex/BackupPlus with SSDs). These older technology SSDs are high performance and have pretty high current demands.

However, I just recently installed a Crucial M500 960GB in a GoFlex shell and so far it seems to be working with the Seagate Thunderbolt, USB 3.0, and FireWire 800 interface units. The M500 is a newer technology which, although not at the same performance level, has significantly lower power requirements than the older higher performance SSDs such as the Crucial M4 and Samsung 840 Pro designs.

I have also experimented with LaCie "Rugged" enclosures and had flakey performance with the older 512GB SSD drives using both the Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 interfaces that this enclosure has. However, I just purchased a retail LaCie "Rugged" 500GB drive which is working fine and it came equipped with a Samsung EVO 840 drive which is of the new lower power technology (although, again not at the same performance level).

So ... with limited testing resources ... that is my experience.


-howard

Blue Jakester said:

Thanks for the information Howard.

When you bricked the SSD drives, were they ruined or could you reformat and reuse them?

Click to expand...

I tried several suggestions from Crucial support to revive them, without success. Fortunately, Crucial was kind enough to replace both of them for me .... great customer service at Crucial!


-howard

Blue Jakester said:

Good to know. Thanks.

Click to expand...

BTW - the replacement 512GB Crucial M4 SSDs are currently running in RAID-0 in my Mac Pro on a Sonnet Tempo Pro PCIe card. They have been running flawlessly 24/7 for probably close to a year now. Very happy with Crucial M4 drives (I have several other smaller ones in service as well).

Blue Jakester said:

Thanks! 750GB would be large enough. I'm only using 500GB of my internal drive and am planning to move infrequently accessed files (like old photos) to a drive separate from the SSD.

Click to expand...

I bought another one of these today - they are excellent units

http://www.monoprice.com/Product/?c...1130705&p_id=10943&seq=1&format=2#description

Blue Jakester said:

One of the posters in that thread is using this wall powered enclosure and I think I'll go this route. Thanks again.

http://www.memorydepot.com/42490.htm

Click to expand...

That would be me.

For me, there was no question that I wanted to get a single drive enclosure with AC power. The only advantage as far as I see it for bus-powered enclosures is portability. I only purchased the Delock to install the 512GB Samsung EVO I was going to use run OS X on with my iMac. It has not moved from the spot where I placed it behind the machine.

If portability is important to you, then perhaps bus-power is more of a consideration. Otherwise, why even add the factor of sufficient power into the mix?

The Delock is actually very light aluminum though and the wall wart is not very large. It also comes with a carrying case.

matreya said:

FYI, that site says "Usually ships within 3-4 weeks"

Click to expand...

Indeed, it doesn't seem to be very widely available in the states at present and where it is being sold it's back ordered due to high demand. That said, $82.50 is about $30 less than I paid for the unit here in Japan where it is a lot more widely available.