I have a Late 2012 iMac with with two Thunderbolt 1 ports. I recently bought a Samsung 850 Pro 256 GB SSD that gets 430 MB/s reads and 400 MB/s writes on the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test, and I've been wondering what speeds I might get if I were to buy one or more additional SSDs and configure them as RAID 0. I've seen all kinds of reviews for various 2 or 4 bay enclosures using RAID 0 and Thunderbolt 2, but I'm having a hard time finding people who have data on using these same enclosures with Thunderbolt 1. I even tried asking OWC, which posts theoretical transfer speeds for T2 for their Thunderbolt enclosures what I could expect for T1, but they didn't have any metrics. If anyone out there has a Mac/iMac/MB with T1 and a Thunderbolt enclosure with at least two bays, let me know what enclosure you have, what SSDs you are using, whether you are using the built-in software RAID or something else, and what your read/write speeds are.
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Real world RAID 0 transfer speed on Thunderbolt 1
- Thread starter DirectorMan
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Here are some results I measured with external Thunderbolt SSDs configured in RAID-0 on my 2012 iMac using a pair of Samsung 840 Pro 256GB SSDs in a Akitio Neutrino Thunder Duo enclosure and in a OWC Thunderbay IV Thunderbolt enclosure (both Thunderbolt I):
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430/400 read/write is very good. Is that over Thunderbolt or internally? If Thunderbolt, which enclosure are you using? I have a 1TB 850 Pro and I don't get those speeds, I get 375MB/320MB read/write with a Seagate Thunderbolt enclosure.
Actually, it's an inateck FEU3NS-1E USB 3.0 enclosure. Sorry I didn't mention that before. I'm maxed out on USB ports and I wanted to see what I might expect if I switched over to Thunderbolt, especially if I went with a RAID 0 solution.
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The best Thunderbolt enclosure for SSDs without a doubt is OWC's Thunderbay 4 mini. I know it's a TB2 enclosure, but I get 1140MB/sec read, 970MB/sec writes with it, which you should still be able to achieve with TB1. That's 4 x Samsung 850 EVO 500GB drives in OS X RAID (software).
How are your running OS X raid software? I tried running it on my rMBP today and it told me it was not an available feature or something along those lines? Does it magically become available when you plug in the enclosure? I have a 1394b drive and 2 USB2.0 drives running when I try this - but no love.
EXACTLY what I'm looking for. Now which drives to use...and which interface.
I really don't do any 4K editing, but do have TB2 and USB3 ports at my disposal...