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Recommend an external hard drive for new 27" iMac
- Thread starter ^^BIGMac
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I've got 4 LaCie's sitting in front of me right now. Thunderbolt would be good but USB 3 isn't bad and a LOT cheaper. I'd pick up a 4TB Blade Runner - looks great and 4TB USB3.
I've had issues with 2 of the 8 I've owned and LaCie was really great about fixing them. Both were issues out of the box so not exactly failures but does make one question quality control. The oldest on I have spinning on another machine is from 2005. So I'm a fan.
I've had issues with 2 of the 8 I've owned and LaCie was really great about fixing them. Both were issues out of the box so not exactly failures but does make one question quality control. The oldest on I have spinning on another machine is from 2005. So I'm a fan.
For most folks, a Thunderbolt HDD is overkill -- USB3 will be more than adequate.
MAKE SURE that ANY USB3 drive you buy specifically states that it has "UASP support" (USB attached SCSI protocol). That enables it to run at the fastest speeds possible.
What I personally "recommend" is that you buy the enclosure and drive separately, and "build your own". This way you can get an enclosure that you KNOW will support UASP, and is "easily openable" if you need to replace the drive inside.
Then, find a drive to go inside.
I'd suggest Hitachi (is that HSTC now?), Toshiba, Samsung for the bare drive.
MAKE SURE that ANY USB3 drive you buy specifically states that it has "UASP support" (USB attached SCSI protocol). That enables it to run at the fastest speeds possible.
What I personally "recommend" is that you buy the enclosure and drive separately, and "build your own". This way you can get an enclosure that you KNOW will support UASP, and is "easily openable" if you need to replace the drive inside.
Then, find a drive to go inside.
I'd suggest Hitachi (is that HSTC now?), Toshiba, Samsung for the bare drive.
I recommend this portable, small, bus powered 4tb RAID drive. http://www.seagate.com/external-hard-drives/portable-hard-drives/performance/backup-plus-fast-hdd/
So from the comments so far it seems I may as well just roll with the drive I have. No?
The reason the one I have doesn't have Thunderbolt is because by 2009 iMac didn't have the capability. That's why I'm using the FireWire 800. But the new box will have USB 3 so, good to go I guess.
The reason the one I have doesn't have Thunderbolt is because by 2009 iMac didn't have the capability. That's why I'm using the FireWire 800. But the new box will have USB 3 so, good to go I guess.
Thunderbolt is only better than usb3 if you have a drive that can transfer data faster than the port itself. No spinning disk, even a raid stripped one, will overrun the USB 3 port. Thunderbolt will shine with an external RAID striped SSD array!
So are you saying that unless you're going SSD to SSD Thunderbolt really isn't going to make a noticeable difference over USB3?
Since your question isn't limited to just USB and TB, I'll throw out the option of building your own NAS using FreeNAS. I spent about $1,700 building a massive 24TB system using server quality hardware. It's a beast and using ZFS Z-Raid2 I have to lose 3 drives at once before losing data. If you network is fast, this will do. If you are going to be editing video over the network, probably not a good solution.
Thunderbolt is overkill for the speed at which an HDD can transfer data. USB 3 will be plenty fast for file storage, unless you're editing video files on the external.
I just ordered a Toshiba Canvio 5TB that with its size has the best price/TB, costing nearly like a barebone drive but you're getting it USB3 enclosed, plus it runs at full 7200rpm with a good cache (dunno yet how much, someone says 128MB).
6TB would have been marginally faster when filling it up, but much more expensive than 5TB.
To me, it looks like the faster external single spinning drive you can get.
http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Canvi...F8&qid=1445275546&sr=8-2&keywords=toshiba+5tb
6TB would have been marginally faster when filling it up, but much more expensive than 5TB.
To me, it looks like the faster external single spinning drive you can get.
http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Canvi...F8&qid=1445275546&sr=8-2&keywords=toshiba+5tb
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It would be helpful to know what you plan to do with the hard drive.
If you want a backup/long term file storage, then speed doesn't matter much. For that purpose, the Seagate 8tb USB 3.0 drives ($250 on Amazon) are hard to beat. They're slow, but eight terabytes is hard to argue with. When I'm editing photos, I keep them on the internal drive for fast loading, and once I'm done with a shoot, I copy them to two of these external drives and delete them from the internal disk. (I don't believe in keeping anything I care about on just one drive; I've had too many drives fail in the past).
On the other hand, if you're going to be working off of the drive, such as editing video, then the best solution would be a RAID array running off of Thunderbolt, which will be super fast, but much more expensive.
If you want a backup/long term file storage, then speed doesn't matter much. For that purpose, the Seagate 8tb USB 3.0 drives ($250 on Amazon) are hard to beat. They're slow, but eight terabytes is hard to argue with. When I'm editing photos, I keep them on the internal drive for fast loading, and once I'm done with a shoot, I copy them to two of these external drives and delete them from the internal disk. (I don't believe in keeping anything I care about on just one drive; I've had too many drives fail in the past).
On the other hand, if you're going to be working off of the drive, such as editing video, then the best solution would be a RAID array running off of Thunderbolt, which will be super fast, but much more expensive.
So how much faster can a raid thunderbolt drive be? Especially compared to a external SSD drive through either thunderbolt or usb3?
I have a huge photo library that I go in and export some photos from every once a while... Would love to move it to a external drive that does not take up space in my main drive, but would definitely be working from it via lightroom. Any suggestions??
USB 3 support up to 640 MBps (megabytes per second) and some of the fastest SSD drives are in the mid 500s read/write. RAID HDDs come in at about half that and non-RAID HDD half again read/write.
Only if you are looking at RAID SSDs or something like this http://www.sonnettech.com/product/fusionpcieflashdrive.html do you need to use that Thunderbolt port for your storage.
Thunderbolt is also a more stable interface than USB3. I've seen tons of reports of people having USB3 drives randomly eject themselves on apple's discussion boards.
You won't find a USB3 enclosure that can deliver anywhere near 640MBps.
And I have 4 x 7200 RPM HDDs in RAID0 inside a Thunderbay IV enclosure, and that volume benchmarks at 720MB/sec. So you can benefit from Thunderbolt even with HDDs in RAID.
I also have 4 x Samsung 850 EVOs x 500GB in RAID0 inside a Thunderbay 4 mini enclosure, that baby flies
The OP was looking at single disk solutions.You won't find a USB3 enclosure that can deliver anywhere near 640MBps.
And I have 4 x 7200 RPM HDDs in RAID0 inside a Thunderbay IV enclosure, and that volume benchmarks at 720MB/sec. So you can benefit from Thunderbolt even with HDDs in RAID.
I also have 4 x Samsung 850 EVOs x 500GB in RAID0 inside a Thunderbay 4 mini enclosure, that baby flies
If you're doing any kind of music recording or production via Pro Tools, Logic, Reason, etc, I would highly recommend a Glyph Studio drive. The two TB model has FW 800 (two) and USB 3 ports. For less critical apps, like Time Machine backup, I use a large 4 TB Western Digital My Book device via USB. Cheap and reliable enough. Right now I have 1 My Book and 2 Glyphs (one for music production, one for manuals, itunes, photos and everything else).
No music recording...a little FCP but it's a hobby! Also a lot of photo editing but I don't see that as a major issue with speed.
I think what I have will be OK for now. I was just a little confused as to how important TB would be in my situation. Turns out probably not that important...My Early 2009 iMac is incredibly slow rendering anything in Final Cut but with the new iMac I think it's going to be night and day even without TB.
I think what I have will be OK for now. I was just a little confused as to how important TB would be in my situation. Turns out probably not that important...My Early 2009 iMac is incredibly slow rendering anything in Final Cut but with the new iMac I think it's going to be night and day even without TB.
That's because OWC don't make hard drives, they make hard drive enclosures, and put different brands of hard drive in their enclosures. Most recently, their 3.5" desktop drives have been Toshiba.