Storage Device

[medavidcook]

Hey, I do alot of photography and am looking at upgrading my storage for my pictures.

Anyone have any recommendations either USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt.

Let me know your thoughts.

 

[Tomorrow]

For simple storage USB 3.0 should be fine.

 

[mmomega]

USB 3 to USB 3.1, drive large enough for your needs.

Thunderbolt doesn't give much in terms of performance especially with the price.

 

[Fishrrman]

For a single drive (i.e., not a multi-drive RAID, etc.), USB3 will perform as well as thunderbolt, for considerably less money...

 

[ZapNZs]

Which Apple computer(s) are you using this with?
What do you want in your solution?

• Wired vs Wireless-via-your-network?
• The ability to use the backup system as a cloud, so that multiple computers/phones/tablets can access it wirelessly from anywhere in the world?
• Redundancy? (i.e., using more than one physical drive to provide superior data integrity in the event of a single drive failure)
• High speed transfers? (if so, how fast?)
• HDD vs SSD?
• What kind of capacity do you need?
• Are you looking more for very high reliability and/or performance or more economy with less emphasis on reliability?

ThunderBolt enclosures carry a high premium, and unless you are using a PCIe SSD or a performance-based RAID setup (using multiple drives,) you likely will not benefit much from the speed - the fastest SATA SSDs on the market transfer files at a max speed of about 550 MB/s, and USB 3.1-1 can get you a little north of 400 MB/s, and eSATA a little higher (for reference, the fastest SATA HDDs transfer at around 260 MB/s, with most being less than half of that.) So USB 3.1, gen1 (formally USB 3.0) or eSATA may be a more economical choice that achieves the same outcome.

Also, will you be storing files on your new storage solution that are not being stored elsewhere? (If the answer is yes, redundancy becomes much more important, and using a backup solution that employs one of several RAID configurations is arguably the best way to protect these pictures/files from loss.)

 

[FireWire2]

There is always pros and cons single drive vs raid
Here are RAID vs Single Drive thing that you will have
- Speed and redundancy: RAID10, 5, 6 will give you speed and HDD failure - RAID
- Cost - Single drive
- Portable - Single drive
- if you edit 4K you must use RAID to get the speed

 

[Amigaman]

I'd go with USB 3.1 and something like the 2TB Samsung T3 external SSD.

Edit: FYI, I bought the Samsung T3 and I'm seeing 410MB/s read and 396MB/s write speeds

 

[Badrottie]

Go with Seagate Slim Drive.

 

[FireWire2]

I'd go with USB 3.1 and something like the 2TB Samsung T3 external SSD.

Edit: FYI, I bought the Samsung T3 and I'm seeing 410MB/s read and 396MB/s write speeds

Samsung 2TB T3 Portable Solid State Drive is $790.00
I rather have
1x http://www.datoptic.com/ec/usb-3-1-to-dual-msata-ssd-supports-raid-0-1-or-jbod.html @ $70.00
2x https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-850-EVO-Internal-MZ-M5E1T0BW $666.00
I'm at $736.00 and get speed of 500MB/s+ read and write

It's faster solution

 

[Amigaman]

I didn't buy the 2TB version. All I wanted was something fast to do backups on and to store things like virtual machines. Ended up with the 500GB T3 for $179.