best ext. drive enclosure (for SSD) for new r-MBP, for older OS...

[malch]

Hi there,
I'm waiting for delivery on a new retina MBP, which will come loaded with Mavericks.
Occasionally when I'm out of office, I'll need to do some editing with this laptop using Avid Media Composer, which is always a Mac-OS release or two behind. So, for example, right now Media Composer works with Mountain Lion, but not Mavericks.

I've got a 250Gb SSD that I'd like to put in an external enclosure (I've got Mountain Lion and Mavericks on my Mac Pro, so I can use Carbon Copy Cloner to make a bootable copy of my MP drive on this SSD). My plan would then be to boot to this drive (that will have Mountain Lion on it, and Media Composer, when I need to edit out of office with my MBP.

My question is: what's the best external SSD enclosure for me to get?

Does my workflow sound good? (booting to this external drive when I need to edit 'on the road'?)

Thanks for any advice,
malch

 

[malch]

Hi there,
I think the MacBook Pro thread might be the better thread for this, because the question is very specific to the new MBP.
Could the moderator please delete this thread?
Thanks,
malch

 

[ender78]

I use the owc 2.5" enclosure. I see 290MB write and 380MB read from my Samsung 830 installed in that enclosure. That is comparable to the performance of the ssd inside my year old retina MBP.

I tried two different owc enclosures and found the one blow a much faster performer

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MSU35320GB8/

 

[Phildo]

This is where we get to curse the lack of FireWire 800 on new MacBook Pros.

I have a Macally PHR-S250UAB, which has two FW800 ports, one FW400 port and a USB port.

Useful casing. I haven't tried it with a Thunderbolt adaptor on a current Mac yet.

 

[hfg]

I have a Oyen MiniPro USB 3.0 enclosure I like:

http://www.amazon.com/MiniPro-Exter...losure/dp/B003VKTJGW/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

 

[ender78]

This is where we get to curse the lack of FireWire 800 on new MacBook Pros.

I have a Macally PHR-S250UAB, which has two FW800 ports, one FW400 port and a USB port.

Useful casing. I haven't tried it with a Thunderbolt adaptor on a current Mac yet.

Image

I linked to the wrong enclosure, the OWC enclosure without drive is only $35. Using a modern drive with a FW800 enclosure is a waste of money. USB3 let alone thunderbolt are so much faster.

 

[Mr. Retrofire]

Hi there,
I'm waiting for delivery on a new retina MBP, which will come loaded with Mavericks.
...
I've got a 250Gb SSD that I'd like to put in an external enclosure (I've got Mountain Lion and Mavericks on my Mac Pro, so I can use Carbon Copy Cloner to make a bootable copy of my MP drive on this SSD). My plan would then be to boot to this drive (that will have Mountain Lion on it, and Media Composer, when I need to edit out of office with my MBP.

My question is: what's the best external SSD enclosure for me to get?

Get one with ASMedia chipset and UASP support, for example:

1. MiniPro 2.5" SATA to USB 3.0 External Aluminum Hard Drive / SSD Enclosure (up to 15mm, UASP)

or

2. MiniPro 2.5" SATA to USB 3.0 & eSATA 6Gbps External Hard Drive / SSD Enclosure (up to 15mm, UASP)

The second enclosure is useful, if you have already a driverless eSATA card in your MP, for example the:
MAXPower eSATA 6G Pro PCIe Controller Card

Btw, do not buy cables from manufacturers with an unknown reputation. The right cable can increase the transfer speed, because it has a better shielding.

The important thing is, that all listed eSATA parts support eSATA 3.0 (6 GBit/s) and all listed USB 3.0 parts support the USB Attached SCSI Protocol (UASP). More about UASP:
Faster USB 3.0 Performance: Examining UASP And Turbo Mode
and
OS X Mountain Lion 10.8 UAS UASP USB Attach SCSI drivers

This are the best hardware solutions which i see at the moment for you (MP, OS X >= 10.8.x, new 2nd generation USB 3.0 rMBP, SATA 3.0 SSD, ...).

 

[malch]

The second enclosure is useful, if you have already a driverless eSATA card in your MP

Wow, that MiniPro 2.5" SATA to USB 3.0 & eSATA 6Gbps looks amazing... thanks for the link.
But can you tell me if the eSATA part of this enclosure will work for me?

My two machines:

1. Mac Pro, with eSATA card in it—not sure if it's driverless or not. Here's what I've got connected to my Mac Pro, in case this makes it clear: two 5-bay FirmTek enclosures with (I think this is the card—I'm copying and pasting from a list of my set-up) a FirmTek SeriTek/2ME4-E 6.0.1 4-Port, PCI-Express, Controller Driver. The card is in slot 4.

2. the new MacBook Pro (arriving Thursday supposedly) that has USB3 and Thunderbolt 2 ports. But I also have a Sonnet Echo ExpressCard Pro, that connects via Thunderbolt to the MBP. Into this I can insert not only my SxS cards, but also a Sonnet Tempo SATA Pro ExpressCard/34, that will allow me to connect to external SATA drives via eSATA (I hope I'm describing this accurately).

Sorry for the rambling description... but your post makes me think that this USB3/e-SATA enclosure is the way to go, for me.
Would you mind commenting (before I invest any more money into hardware?)
thanks,
malch