Thunderbolt Yes/No

[rugmankc]

I currently have a Lacie Porsche Design ext USB HD. P9223/5400rpm. I have it partitioned for TM and manual backups, drag and drop. I have and older, larger Lacie I use for occasional CCC backups. Needs power cables and a hassle to hook up every time as no room on table to leave it plugged in.

Would like to buy another Lacie USB to replace the older one. Have a rMBP late 2015 with 256gb SSD.

Debating getting the same Lacie Porsche or a Lacie Rugged 2tb Thunderbolt. I would like to make my current Porsche use CCC and the new one for TM and manual backups. I do small files, pictures and 5-8gb HD Movies for my manual backups. From my reading it doesn't seem that I will see any significant difference in backup speed with the Thunderbolt for the manual backups. Or, will I with the rMBP SSD to the Lacie Thunderbolt HD as opposed to the rMBP to the 5400rpm Porsche. Will have the two HD's on a hub. Anyone have a real world response to this question.

One other question. On my current Lacie Porsche P9223 the option thru Disk Utility to re-partition is greyed out. Do I need to Erase it before I can reparation it to one partition for CCC. I guess being 2tb with a 500gb partition for TM, I could just leave it and backup CCC to that partition. Rather than wasting the other 1.44 tb partition. My SSD is only 256gb anyway.

Any thoughts appreciated--

 

[satcomer]

If you decide to get a Thunderbolt drive it has two different issues! First the speed is higher do the speed of the external comes into play so pay attention to drive in the external, IMHO on Thunderbolt use SSDs! Secondly make sure the external Thunderbolt has a extra passthrough port on the external since Thunderbolt supports multiple connections!

So if you determining to use 5400rpm drives then just use a USB 3 drive!

 

[shoehornhands]

I currently have a Lacie Porsche Design ext USB HD. P9223/5400rpm. I have it partitioned for TM and manual backups, drag and drop. I have and older, larger Lacie I use for occasional CCC backups. Needs power cables and a hassle to hook up every time as no room on table to leave it plugged in.

Would like to buy another Lacie USB to replace the older one. Have a rMBP late 2015 with 256gb SSD.

Debating getting the same Lacie Porsche or a Lacie Rugged 2tb Thunderbolt. I would like to make my current Porsche use CCC and the new one for TM and manual backups. I do small files, pictures and 5-8gb HD Movies for my manual backups. From my reading it doesn't seem that I will see any significant difference in backup speed with the Thunderbolt for the manual backups. Or, will I with the rMBP SSD to the Lacie Thunderbolt HD as opposed to the rMBP to the 5400rpm Porsche. Will have the two HD's on a hub. Anyone have a real world response to this question.

One other question. On my current Lacie Porsche P9223 the option thru Disk Utility to re-partition is greyed out. Do I need to Erase it before I can reparation it to one partition for CCC. I guess being 2tb with a 500gb partition for TM, I could just leave it and backup CCC to that partition. Rather than wasting the other 1.44 tb partition. My SSD is only 256gb anyway.

Any thoughts appreciated--

My advice would be to avoid the all-in-one external storage solutions, and purchase the external drive enclosure, and hard drive / SSD separately (i.e. just put a hard drive / SSD in an enclosure yourself).

If you purchase the enclosure, and hard drive separately, you can purchase exactly what you want / need, and purchase quality components (as opposed to the all-in-one solutions, which typically use whatever is cheapest).

For example, here's a good option if you want to maximize performance: http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-...TF8&qid=1462585542&sr=8-1&keywords=S251BMU313

It's a USB 3.1 (Gen 2 / 10 Gbps) aluminum enclosure with UASP. Stick something like a 512GB Samsung 850 Pro in there, and you've got a high quality, speedy external storage solution for $200 (connected to standard USB 3.0 / 3.1 (Gen 1), you'll get ~400 MBps read/write, and with USB 3.1 (Gen 2) you'll see 500 MBps+ read/write).

I typically go with startech enclosures, as they have a ton of different enclosure options / configurations, the quality is solid, and cosmetically they're no frills / all business, but that's just a personal preference.

Anyway, that's just one example, and you can purchase an enclosure for any drive size, and internal / external interface you want.

 

[rugmankc]

Thanks for the info guys. The enclosures are interesting and maybe something down the line. I bought another Lacie Porsche 2tb. With 2 identical drives I will leave the original keep doing my TM backups and manually copying data/media to the other partition on it. The new one will be for CCC. I don't have extremely large amounts to transfer and after initial cloning the rest are incremental. So, I think the USB 3.0 drives are sufficient for now. Plus I got a free 50.00 Amazon card to put toward it. Will run both off a hub. Hope that works out well. I use Crash Plan for my cloud backups, works great.

I don't need 2tb for CCC, so will partition it. I assume on the CCC partition it can still be made bootable as opposed to needing the whole drive as one partition to be bootable.

 

[satcomer]

Plus with Thunderbolt 3 coming down the line and USB 3.1 and my previous statement that drive speed will be VERY important in all external DAS devices!

 

[rugmankc]

Agreed, just taking least expensive path for a couple years and then see. May pick up a 4k iMac at years end and re-evaluate externals.

 

[rugmankc]

Just a final question I mentioned before:

Any downside to partitioning the 2tb Lacie and using just one partition for CCC. CCC makes the drive (partition) bootable when you first run it. Don't need 2tb on CCC backups for my 256gb rMBP hard drive. Doubt I would need it for a 500gb iMac I may get later this year.

Any thoughts--

 

[rugmankc]

Also, thought I read it matters in what order you plug ext drives into the hub. My current Lacie plugged into usb port on my rMBP is partitioned for TM and storage. I will plug the new and current one into the same port thru the new hub. New lacie will be CCC. Just haven't decided on partitioning it yet.

 

[satcomer]

Just remember a clone will slightly larger than OS X that was cloned to support booting! So partitioning is not smart on a clone!

 

[rugmankc]

Thanks, I would make a 1tb partition. I think I will use the entire 2tb drive though, unless I need more storage space which is a long ways off.

 

[chabig]

Thanks, I would make a 1tb partition. I think I will use the entire 2tb drive though, unless I need more storage space which is a long ways off.

Remember, if you're using a partition for backup and a partition for data, you still need to keep a backup of that data on another drive.

 

[rugmankc]

Right, I got data on another Lacie with TM and I have TC (wifi) and CrashPlan. And CCC.


I guess as far as my previous question--the order of replugging the now two drives into the new hub doesn't matter???

 

[rugmankc]

thanks for the help--boths drives running fine off hub

clone went well