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Thunderbolt bus powered drives? RAID?

joecool99

joecool99

Suspended
Original poster
Aug 20, 2008
726
69
USA
i've 2x 2TB RAID0 lacie quadra drives. the older gen with FW800. best i ever had.
powered directly via FW800 cable and can daisy chain them together.
also it's silent. there is no fan.

i would like to upgrade thunderbolt drives later this fall when new MBP is released.
however i didn't see any good setup as my drives. ideally i want RAID0, BUS POWERED thunderbolt drives that can be daisy-chained. the current lacie drives sucks as they need power supply. what's the point. then i might as well carry big bulky desktop drives.
i need a solution that get's powered by thunderbolt.

what's out there ?
 
Unlikely. FireWire could supply up to 45W of current for bus-powered devices, Thunderbolt only 10W.
 
FreakinEurekan said:
Unlikely. FireWire could supply up to 45W of current for bus-powered devices, Thunderbolt only 10W.
Click to expand...

While the FireWire spec permitted power up to 45w, no shipping Mac ever exceeded 15-16w.

Thunderbolt 2 does not increase the available power, but newer Thunderbolt chipsets draw less power for the controller, which may make a bit more power available for drives.

2 drives or 2 SSDs? not until lower power versions are available, or if manufacturers add a battery boost for more power capacity.

So...for now, only wall powered Thunderbolt devices will deliver what you are looking for.

Note: there is the Promise J2 that packages 2 mSATA devices in the same case. When bus powered, performance is throttled so as to not draw too much power. Only if the optional AC adapter is connected does the performance increase to its max data rate. A spendy drive, though!
 
joecool99 said:
i've 2x 2TB RAID0 lacie quadra drives. the older gen with FW800. best i ever had.
powered directly via FW800 cable and can daisy chain them together.
also it's silent. there is no fan.

i would like to upgrade thunderbolt drives later this fall when new MBP is released.
however i didn't see any good setup as my drives. ideally i want RAID0, BUS POWERED thunderbolt drives that can be daisy-chained. the current lacie drives sucks as they need power supply. what's the point. then i might as well carry big bulky desktop drives.
i need a solution that get's powered by thunderbolt.

what's out there ?
Click to expand...

Unlikely that you have a bus powered LaCie Quadra drive; this was more likely either the Desktop d2 Quadra or the LaCie 2big which had a separate power supply, or you have the LaCie Rugged with FW400/FW800 and USB which was bus powered.

Revisit the LaCie website, and you'll find the LaCie Rugged Thunderbolt/USB 3.0 drive which is 1 TB HDD, or 120 GB or 256 GB SSD.

2 of them can be striped together if you feel you have the need for speed and capacity.

There's also the 2TB USB 3.0 HDD drive from Western Digital.
 
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