External Drive Enclosure for Mac Studio – Thunderbolt or USB 3.1?

[spetznatz]

I have four SATA III 3.5" HDDs for things like Time Machine, TV Library, redundant backups, etc., attached to a Thunderbolt port on the rear of the Studio. At the moment they're in a YottaMaster USB 3.0 enclosure, but I've noticed that videos are very slow in loading through Apple TV. This wasn't much of a problem before in my Mac Pro (2010) when the disks were on the SATA bus.

I'm pointing the finger at the USB 3.0 interface (5 GB/s) and am considering getting an external Thunderbolt (40 GB/s) or USB 3.1 (10 GB/s) enclosure. But Thunderbolt enclosures – which I'm sure would alleviate the problem – are easily twice the price of USB 3.1 enclosures.

The thing is, the SATA bus in the Mac Pro was SATA II, so only 3 GB/s. So would USB 3.1 solve the problem or should I bite the bullet and get a Thunderbolt enclosure? I don't want to throw good money after bad...

TIA,

 

[jwahaus]

HDD's typically have a maximum throughput of 150~200 MB/s so even the 5Gb/s bus speed of USB 3.0 should be plenty fast enough.

 

[Middleman-77]

Well I’ve been using RAID and NAS drives for years and I would say that overall RAID drives are still much faster (and safer) than NAS. If I were to choose one these days it would be something like an Areca 4-bay or 6-bay TB3 drive. As I would see this as an investment down the line I would pay extra for the speed and will not go for USB 3.1 as they are very slow and just not worth it.

 

[spetznatz]

Thanks, both. I'm starting to point the finger at the Yottamaster enclosure. I may have to just bite the bullet and get a Thunderbolt enclosure.

 

[TzunamiOSX]

Thanks, both. I'm starting to point the finger at the Yottamaster enclosure. I may have to just bite the bullet and get a Thunderbolt enclosure.

Acasis Thunderbolt Case (around 119 $) with Sabrent Rocket 1 TB (PCIe 3.1) working well as boot partition.

 

[theorist9]

How big are your HDD's for each task, particularly the one you use for Apple TV? If you're only encountering a speed issue with Apple TV, you could leave everything else as-is, but move Apple TV onto an external SSD.