External HD USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt

Since you'll be relying on this for storage, because the internal storage is relatively small, thunderbolt. Without a question. You've already shown you can pay a premium price. Thunderbolt for you, without a doubt.

 

it makes not one bit of difference. The speed of the USB3 vs Thunderbolt interface is getting into splitting hairs. Unless you are going with a multi hard drive RAID0 case then you will be limited by the drive speed. Even a single SSD can't exceed to throughput enough to clearly justify one over the other.

Just buy what is available at a price you are willing to pay.

 

No.

OP, look up a simple speed video on YouTube of USB 3 vs Thunderbolt. You'll see the difference.

 

If the external drive is a single spinning HD, you will not see the speed benefit of TB. The drive itself is too slow. You are just as well off to get a cheaper USB 3 enclosure.

If the external drive is an SSD, then you have two choices. The first is to put the SSD in a USB3 enclosure that does the UASP protocol. The second choice is a TB enclosure. The performance would be about the same with the USB3-UASP enclosure being cheaper.

BTW. don't forget a separate external drive for backups!

 

Check out Samsung's T1 or the new T3 SSD external drives. The T3 comes in a 2 TB capacity plus smaller sizes, and the T1 is available in a 1 TB size as well as the smaller capacities. This is a very fast, physically small bus-driven USB 3.0 connection external drive that works well as a supplemental drive when one has a computer with limited SSD capacity. I bought a retina MacBook Pro (512 GB SSD) in December and shortly after setting it up also purchased a 1 TB Samsung T1 to use as a supplemental drive. I also have various other external drives that are used for backup purposes. The T1 or T3 are not inexpensive, but I think that the SSD speed and the incredibly small size, great for travel, makes it worthwhile.

If you're after more capacity than this, since you're using a desktop machine and portability might not be all that important to you, the Seagate Backup Plus drive comes in various capacities, I think up to 4 TB, perhaps more, and it again plugs into a USB 3.0 port.

 

It is, all you have to is compare the two side by side.

I'm surprised so many on this site are saying USB 3 is right up there with TB. TB is easily faster.

 

TB vs USB3 is abut the same thruput (~400 MB/sec) with a single SSD, but where TB really shines is in multibay enclosures with RAID.

 

Its important we know what the space going to be used for? For all we know a NAS could be your best choice.

Please please PLEASE don't listen to people that would blindly recommend thunderbolt without a use case. Thats like a doctor prescribing you medications from the diagnostic being "sick"....lol

 

if ur external drive is going to be a ssd i would go with thunderbolt.thunderbolt is a lot faster with ssd than usb

 

Agreed provided the USB 3 connection is using UASP. Then the overall performance of the transport and end device will be about the same.

 

If one is connecting a single drive (particularly a platter-based drive) to the Mac, USB3 is both economical and the "speed-equal" of thunderbolt.

One can pay more for thunderbolt and smile with a bit of snob appeal, but that's about the only benefit you'll get out of it.

Even with an SSD, they're all-but equal.
Granted, USB3 can't support TRIM, but for all practical purposes, TRIM is of little importance.

I've been booting and running my late-2012 Mac Mini for over 3 years now from a USB3 "external booter", with -NO- noticeable drop in performance...