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Best SSD 1tb thunderbolt 2 external hard drive for RMBP

S

slagathor001

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 2, 2011
197
74
Subject says it all. Thanks so much! Can't find a thunderbolt 2 external hard drive on amazon. Thanks a lot guys!

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If a hard drive advertises that it can use thunderbolt would a thunderbolt 2 wire make it have all the capabilities of thunderbolt 2 when I plug it in my retina macbook pro?

Thanks!
 
The reason that Thunderbolt II external hard drives don't exist is because there is no reason to. Thunderbolt I is way faster than even the fastest HDD. The only thing that can saturate a Thunderbolt interface is a high end PCIe SSD or an SSD RAID0 array.

If you are looking for a 2.5" external drive, it will read/write at around 100 MB/s, up to 200MB/s for desktop drives. I does not matter if it is hooked up via Thunderbolt I/II, or USB 3.0 - the internal drive speed is the limiting factor. I would save some money and stick with USB 3.0. Thunderbolt really only shines when hooked up to extremely fast I/O devices.
 
COrocket said:
The reason that Thunderbolt II external hard drives don't exist is because there is no reason to. Thunderbolt I is way faster than even the fastest HDD. The only thing that can saturate a Thunderbolt interface is a high end PCIe SSD or an SSD RAID0 array.

If you are looking for a 2.5" external drive, it will read/write at around 100 MB/s, up to 200MB/s for desktop drives. I does not matter if it is hooked up via Thunderbolt I/II, or USB 3.0 - the internal drive speed is the limiting factor. I would save some money and stick with USB 3.0. Thunderbolt really only shines when hooked up to extremely fast I/O devices.
Click to expand...

Thank you! That is the exact kind of answer I was looking for... Would a thunderbolt 2 wire work with a thunderbolt external hard drive?
 
If you want to daisy chain, an external Thunderbolt2 HDD is useful, as downstream devices can still get maximum capability; eg 4K displays

LaCie does have a 1TB Little Big Disk with Thunderbolt2 interface. It's not bus powered, but does deliver 1.3GB/sec thruput, and has been reviewed by several different websites. Check out www.barefeats.com for the most comprehensive one.

Inside the LaCie are 2 PCIe SSD sticks that connect directly via PCIe rather than the slower SATA3 interface as most mSATA and 2.5" SATA SSDs do.
 
g4cube said:
If you want to daisy chain, an external Thunderbolt2 HDD is useful, as downstream devices can still get maximum capability; eg 4K displays

LaCie does have a 1TB Little Big Disk with Thunderbolt2 interface. It's not bus powered, but does deliver 1.3GB/sec thruput, and has been reviewed by several different websites. Check out www.barefeats.com for the most comprehensive one.

Inside the LaCie are 2 PCIe SSD sticks that connect directly via PCIe rather than the slower SATA3 interface as most mSATA and 2.5" SATA SSDs do.
Click to expand...


The little big disk looks insane! Does anyone know if Lacie has an external hard drive that's 1tb, thunderbolt and 7200rpm?

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slagathor001 said:
The little big disk looks insane! Does anyone know if Lacie has an external hard drive that's 1tb, thunderbolt and 7200rpm?
Click to expand...

Just found this http://www.amazon.com/G-Technology-...=8-1&keywords=g+technology+thunderbolt+mobile

Would anyone recommend that?
 
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what would you want a 1tb spinning drive with Tb for?!

Thunderbolt only makes sende with either multiple spinning drives in a raid config, or a SSD.
TB2 only makes sende for PCIX SSDs really from what I get.
 
chfilm said:
what would you want a 1tb spinning drive with Tb for?!

Thunderbolt only makes sende with either multiple spinning drives in a raid config, or a SSD.
TB2 only makes sende for PCIX SSDs really from what I get.
Click to expand...

Clearly I'm not as learned on this subject as you guys! Right now I have a 500gb seagate external hard drive that's usb 2.0. It works like sh***ttttt and most of my externals always have.

I'm looking to spend $180-$350 (more around $200) for a nice 1tb external hard drive to backup my retina MBP. I trust all of your opinions on here as most of you know whats actually good, useful and makes most sense to buy.

Thankssss!!!!!
 
slagathor001 said:
I'm looking to spend $180-$350 (more around $200) for a nice 1tb external hard drive to backup my retina MBP. I trust all of your opinions on here as most of you know whats actually good, useful and makes most sense to buy.

Thankssss!!!!!
Click to expand...

USB 3.0:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MSU35S1GB8/

Thunderbolt1:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MOTGTBH5T1.0/

As you can see, the USB 3.0 version is less than half the price of the Thunderbolt one.
 
slagathor001 said:
Code:

I'm liking those a lot. Why did you choose them specifically?

Is it true what Chfilm said about thunderbolt only being useful if it's SSD? If so why?
Click to expand...

I chose them because I've got 4 of the USB3, and they work perfectly.

Thunderbolt is useful for SSDs only, or unless you're out of USB3 ports and don't want to buy a USB3 hub.
 
slagathor001 said:
Code:

I'm liking those a lot. Why did you choose them specifically?

Is it true what Chfilm said about thunderbolt only being useful if it's SSD? If so why?
Click to expand...
That's because today's regular ssds deliver speeds up to 550 mb/s where USB 3 starts to become the bottleneck.

A traditional spinning HDD only gets up to 200 mb/s max and since thunderbolt 1 can give you up to almost a gigabyte per second, it would be wasted on such a hard dive.

Only if you combine multiple spinning drives to a raid 0 or better 5, like in the promise Pegasus, you get speeds that are even faster than sata ssds.
Then, thunderbolt makes sense again.

If you're just looking for a backup solution and are not a video editor or something, I'd suggest you go with USB 3, maybe two spinning drives as a raid 1, or you get a Samsung Evo 840 1TB SSD if you're craving more for speed than for capacity and put it in a uasp capable (ssd optimized it's called on Amazon) USB 3 enclosure. It will deliver speeds up to 430 mb/s
 
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