External Hard Drive for iTunes - Thunderbolt or USB?

[VaatiKaiba]

I've almost filled my iMac's hard drive, and so I'm looking at getting an external drive to house my iTunes library. I'm thinking of getting a 3TB drive. The only Thunderbolt drive I can find is a LaCie one that's over twice the price of a comparable USB (2.0 - my Mac doesn't have 3.0) drive.

Is it worth, for iTunes in particular, getting a Thunderbolt drive given the extra cost? I have an Apple TV as well, if that makes any difference (would streaming be slowed down?). Or would I be ok to get a USB drive (and perhaps another one for backing up!)?

Thanks in advance!

 

[gnasher729]

I've almost filled my iMac's hard drive, and so I'm looking at getting an external drive to house my iTunes library. I'm thinking of getting a 3TB drive. The only Thunderbolt drive I can find is a LaCie one that's over twice the price of a comparable USB (2.0 - my Mac doesn't have 3.0) drive.

Is it worth, for iTunes in particular, getting a Thunderbolt drive given the extra cost? I have an Apple TV as well, if that makes any difference (would streaming be slowed down?). Or would I be ok to get a USB drive (and perhaps another one for backing up!)?

USB 2.0 will read / write data at about 34 MB per second. Reading an average music file of 4 minutes / 256kbit/sec takes a quarter second. Reading a 2 GB video file takes a minute. For video playback, that's no problem at all. Look at it like that: For the same money, you get one Thunderbolt drive, or a USB drive plus a backup drive. If your original drive goes bad, the backup drive saves you 100 times the time the Thunderbolt drive could ever save you.

 

[FireWire2]

I've almost filled my iMac's hard drive, and so I'm looking at getting an external drive to house my iTunes library. I'm thinking of getting a 3TB drive. The only Thunderbolt drive I can find is a LaCie one that's over twice the price of a comparable USB (2.0 - my Mac doesn't have 3.0) drive.

Is it worth, for iTunes in particular, getting a Thunderbolt drive given the extra cost? I have an Apple TV as well, if that makes any difference (would streaming be slowed down?). Or would I be ok to get a USB drive (and perhaps another one for backing up!)?

Thanks in advance!

Get this box, then you no longer need an external, just pop-in ANY SATA drive and ready to go.
http://www.amazon.com/enclosure-support-USB3-0-eSATA-FireWire400/dp/B00DJB5R3C

 

[eXan]

With USB2 you won't have issues streaming the highest bitrate video iTunes and ATV can support.

Thunder bolt is for high-tech stuff only.