True. Considering a car has 3 year warranty in uk why would someone waste money on a new car yearly?? Each to there own. Considering a car loses up to 20% as soon as you drive it off the forecourt you mates must be rich & silly or they're are driving company cars. Even then know company will upgrade yearly. Peace
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True. Considering a car has 3 year warranty in uk why would someone waste money on a new car yearly?? Each to there own. Considering a car loses up to 20% as soon as you drive it off the forecourt you mates must be rich & silly or they're are driving company cars. Even then know company will upgrade yearly. Peace
Chill out? Point to where it seems I am out of control? Did you seriously ask why I cannot afford to buy a TB external because I own an iMac? That is a pretty ignorant question to throw at someone.
Because you must know, I shall tell you. Yes I could spend $500 on a 1TB TB external, but since I smart with how I spend my money, I would rather spend about $150 on a USB3/FW800 1TB external. I am going to tell you something you may not know. Just because somebody could spend the money on something, doesn't mean they should. The reason why I have money is because I am a very conscious consumer who doesn't just say, "oh, since I spent a lot of money on my mac, might as well blow it on everything else that's a premium too!"
Btw, I am not trolling sites for iMac release dates, "cos that would be sad." If anyone body seems like they may need to chill a little, I think you might need to.
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I respect your decision 100% in every way. Speed is critical and I am glad Apple offer something greater than USB3 currently for those who need it.
As much as I would like it, USB3 for me will do until TB comes down in pricing.
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You didn't even address the question.
You merely puffed your chest & tried to change the subject.
Are you an Apple politician?
You made the claim that Thunderbolt devices cost 5X what USB 3 devices cost and the facts do not bear that out.
I showed you comparable devices and for the money, and better performance Thunderbolt wins.
Whilst you wait for the slower, weaker, and cheaper USB 3 others will be using Thunderbolt.
Good luck with that maybe soon to be released iMac you are waiting on.
LaCie 1TB Thunderbolt Drive $299
LaCie 1TB USB3 Drive $175.99
So much for your " 5X " cost claim.
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Was as I showed in my example ... if you are looking at RAID arrays, the cost difference between USB3 and TB is negligible.
Consider the performance gain, and why would you go with USB3 ?
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Once again, you tried to deviate to answer the original question.
I never made any claims that Thunderbolt costs 5x more than the USB3 equivalent.
I asked one simple question in which you can NOT answer, which is fine but try not to use straw man tactics.
You are right, it was MacOG728893 who made that wild claim.
So what was YOUR question?
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Is this your question?
Is so it has been answered.
LaCie 1TB Thunderbolt - $299
LaCie 1TB USB3 - $179.95
A 1TB USB3 external HDD costs about $120.
How much does a Thunderbolt 1TB external HDD cost? (If one even exists).
Never mind .... it's not worth my time to engage in this anymore.
Bottom line, if you need mass storage and performance Thunderbolt is the way to go.
Bottom line, if you need mass storage and performance Thunderbolt is the way to go.
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I just did a search myself.
I see that Seagate has a Thunderbolt adapter for their Goflex External HDD for about $100.
Their GoFlex 2TB external goes for about $130.
$230 - that's actually not bad but obviously more but you do get over double the throughput.
I am not looking at RAID arrays so it does not apply for me, but thank you for pointing that at anyways.
I have consider the performance gain and have stated clearly why I am going with USB3 until TB is cheaper.
I will say this, I just looked at Lacie's website and their TB externals have come down a little bit, so I guess that is good news! But I still think that their TB externals should also have USB3 if you need to have it for a friends computer or something. Ultimately someone could make a converter, but they just haven't yet.
Choosing USB3 is not unreasonable. No computer I currently have access to currently has a Thunderbolt port. On the other hand, every computer I have access to has at least USB 2.0. Since USB is forward-compatible, I could connect a USB3 drive to one of these computers and get access to my data. On the other hand, if I had a single Thunderbolt computer and put my data on a Thunderbolt drive, it would be quite inconvenient to get access to my data if something went wrong with that computer. You like Thunderbolt, that's clear, and it's a good choice for you. But it's not the only sensible choice for everyone, and I hope the next iMac provides choice in the matter.
What about something like this?
Faster than USB2 & Firewire.
Performance Specifications
Transfer Rates
Ethernet 10/100/1000 Mb/s capable
Physical Specifications
Capacity 1 TB
Interface Ethernet
http://store.westerndigital.com/sto...tegory.52233400/parid.13092300/catid.13092900
Faster than USB2 & Firewire.
Performance Specifications
Transfer Rates
Ethernet 10/100/1000 Mb/s capable
Physical Specifications
Capacity 1 TB
Interface Ethernet
http://store.westerndigital.com/sto...tegory.52233400/parid.13092300/catid.13092900
Its silly that such drives don't also have a USB-2 connection on them ... but if they did, then people would want USB-3 I guess!!!
They are overpriced IMO, at least in Australia. When PC machines ship them, things will change.
If they ever do ... USB is more than half as quick.
I have a couple of 1.5TB Seagate GoFlex drives that I bought at Costco. These drives come with a USB 3.0 interface... but the interface is replaceable. One option is a Thunderbolt adapter. This allows different interfaces with different computers.
Currently none of my computers have a USB 3.0 interface. Hopefully that will change once I upgrade to the '12 iMac. Like you, all of my computers have USB 2.0... but I also have a single machine (MacBook Air) with TB.
As an experiment, I bought the Seagate Thunderbolt adapter. I ran some tests to compare the difference between USB 2.0 and Thunderbolt. I created a 25GB folder of large files (69 files)... and then timed read/write speeds with USB 2.0, and then with TB. Time below is measured in minutes to transfer 25GB using the Seagate 1.5TB GoFlex hard drive.
HDD on USB 2.0: 11:44 (read) - 14:52(write)
HDD on Thunderbolt: 5:05 (read) - 4:36 (write)
Then I ran the same test using the same TB adapter with an older SSD that I had hanging around:
SSD on Thunderbolt: 1:43 (read) - 3:55 (write)
By comparing the HDD vs SSD performance on TB, one conclusion that I reached is that the HDD TB performance appears to limited by the disk drive, not by TB. Whether the HDD would be equally fast on USB 3.0 (vs TB) is unknown... but I suspect that a single cheap USB 3.0 HDD would probably be close to the same speed as it is on TB because HDDs are slow. I would not expect the same with a single SSD... and I will test that once I finally have a USB 3.0 machine. I suspect (but have not proved) that a good SSD will always be faster on TB vs USB 3.0.
I certainly agree with those who feel that direct attached RAID boxes will benefit from Thunderbolt. They are fast, expensive, and are used on workloads where users are willing to pay for performance.
Currently... if was purchasing external storage, I would go with the following:
External HDD: USB 3.0 (because of cost)
External SSD: Thunderbolt (because of performance)
Direct attached RAID: Thunderbolt (because of performance)
/Jim
Yes,
When you pull the adapter off of a GoFlex drive... you will see the actual SATA connector of the drive itself. My HDDs came with a USB 3.0 interface. It is of course also backwards compatible with USB 2.0.
The TB adapter is fairly large (compared to the USB adapter). It actually extends below the dive, as well as off the back. I would estimate that it doubles the total volume with TB attached. However, as you can see by the numbers, it is really fast.
With either the USB or the TB adapter... you can just plug in a bare drive and it will work. That is what I did when testing my old SSD.
/Jim
Wow, thanks for this very valuable information.
Now the TB port has a use that doesn't cost an arm & leg for a device!
The mechanical form factor of the adapter is designed to mate with a GoFlex drive. You can attach any bare SATA 2.5" drive, but it is not a pretty package. I used a small stack (maybe 6) of business cards under the drive as a spacer to compensate for the SSD not being in a package.
/Jim