External Thunderbolt drives

specialman

specialman

Suspended / Banned
Messages
8,193
Name
Pat MacInnes
Edit My Images
Yes
My work iMac is full-to-bursting thanks to my trigger finger when shooting stills, and my my ability to film far too much rubbish when doing video.

So I'm looking at large external drives that will work well with Final Cut pro X.

I have some 2TB WD network drives that are used as image storage but they don't seem to strike up a reliable connection with FCPX so I'm opting for a dedicated drive that will only be used by my machine for video storage.

I've had a very good relationship with LaCie products (aside from one portable drive going wrong), especially it's old D2 Firewire drives, so with Lacie's support of Thunderbolt the D2 4TB drive seems a good product to start with and at a reasonable price. Anyone got experience of this drive? The majority of reviews seem positive, with the odd one or two saying it's akin to the demon spawn from hell and should be avoided.

I know WD does TB drives also, along with a few other brands, but I'm not convinced they are ultimately ideal - am I wrong?

Also, FCPX users; have you seen a big difference in using files via TB?

Machine is an 27" 3.4ghz i7 iMac with 32GB RAM running 10.8.5, 2GB graphics and a 1.12GB Fusion drive.
 
neil_g said:
eurgh lacie.

that aside the premium for thunderbolt drives isnt worth it. sata drives (even SSD) just dont saturate USB3.
Click to expand...

LaCie seem a bit like marmite…

£280 for a 4TB Thunderbolt drive seemed pretty good value.

Are SATA drives better? Quicker? For data transfer onto the drive (i.e. copying files) it seems TB is heading up to 10GBp/s, but with a real word read/write speed of about 180MBsp/s… will SATA drives match that at a comparable price for the size or am I looking at this the wrong way?….
 
specialman said:
Are SATA drives better?.... or am I looking at this the wrong way?….
Click to expand...
All HDD/SSDs are terminated in a SATA connector. All you are doing by buying a TB drive is to get a TB<->SATA interface.
 
specialman said:
LaCie seem a bit like marmite…

£280 for a 4TB Thunderbolt drive seemed pretty good value.

Are SATA drives better? Quicker? For data transfer onto the drive (i.e. copying files) it seems TB is heading up to 10GBp/s, but with a real word read/write speed of about 180MBsp/s… will SATA drives match that at a comparable price for the size or am I looking at this the wrong way?….
Click to expand...

just had loads of lacie enclosures fail.

thats double the price of a USB3 4TB. thunderbolt wont be any faster than USB3, unless youre going to be daisychaining RAID0 SSD arratys.
 
arad85 said:
All HDD/SSDs are terminated in a SATA connector. All you are doing by buying a TB drive is to get a TB<->SATA interface.
Click to expand...

….and of course, there's no option to have a SATA connection on an enclosed computer like an iMac. So TB does an identical job, is that what you're saying?
 
what we're saying is that an external drive is limited by its own interface inside the enclosure, i.e. SATA. thunderbolt is massively overkill for SATA drives when it wont even make USB3 sweat.

therefore thunderbolt is currently (with current hard drive tech) a waste of money over USB3, unless you are daisychaining RAID0 SSD arrays.
 
Do you need the expense of Thunderbolt. USB3 should be fast enough for most uses, provided you don't go via a hub.

I've had lacie drives which have failed, but then have some other makes.Nothing lasts for ever. Not happy with LaCie have a look at G-Tech
 
Chappers said:
Do you need the expense of Thunderbolt. USB3 should be fast enough for most uses, provided you don't go via a hub.

I've had lacie drives which have failed, but then have some other makes.Nothing lasts for ever. Not happy with LaCie have a look at G-Tech
Click to expand...

Although I can work in FCPX on video files that are on the HD, I will be storing all my video content on the external drive(s) at some point. Data transfer (i.e. copying files) isn't an issue - USB 3.0 is fast enough, although you can always do with faster can't you? - but I want the fastest speed from drive to iMac for when I work on files that aren't held on the iMac's HD. I'm just not sure if USB 3.0 will handle what could be big (2-6GB) video files, over a cable.
 
specialman said:
I'm just not sure if USB 3.0 will handle what could be big (2-6GB) video files, over a cable.
Click to expand...
The bottleneck on/off the disk is the SATA interface. Onan HDD it maxes out at 120MB/sec and on an SSD at 500ish MB/sec. Whether you connect that drive internally, via USB3 or TB won't make it go any faster (well. OK, you might find there are slight differences but...)
 
arad85 said:
The bottleneck on/off the disk is the SATA interface. Onan HDD it maxes out at 120MB/sec and on an SSD at 500ish MB/sec. Whether you connect that drive internally, via USB3 or TB won't make it go any faster (well. OK, you might find there are slight differences but...)
Click to expand...

I think I understand - we're talking about the bottleneck being the actual inner working of the computer, right? No matter how fast the external drive and the theoretical speed of the device and its cables, the computer can only be so fast so that limits the speed of the things attached to it?
 
One option with FCPX is to opt for Proxy files rather than the full res ones. This leaves the full file on an your external drive but you work with a smaller file in FCPX. FCPX only needs the full res file for the final render.

Does mean you have to make sure you don't move rename or do anything similar else FCPX loses the link to them. However you can re link fairly easy but it's annoying to get the "Red Box when you run the project, and have no idea what happened to the original files"
 
specialman said:
I think I understand - we're talking about the bottleneck being the actual inner working of the computer, right? No matter how fast the external drive and the theoretical speed of the device and its cables, the computer can only be so fast so that limits the speed of the things attached to it?
Click to expand...
Yes, but the bottleneck is at the disk end, not the computer end.
 
I've seen dozens of failed La Cie drives, but most were power supply failures on the old metal-cased Firewire drives. Bottom line is that all drives fail, you just need to keep backups and replace drives when the warranty expires

I bought some Buffalo USB2 drives earlier in the year. They were cheaper than a bare drive (how does that work?) and when I worked out the annual cost of drives with 1, 2, 3 and 5-year warranties it was obvious that the 2-year warranty drives were cheapest

So buy some USB3 drives and throw them away when the warranty expires. Or demote them to backup use, assuming you keep more than one backup set

The beauty of USB is that it is backwards-compatible and every computer has USB. So when your PC fails you can pick up the files and be working elsewhere immediately

Nick Froome
 
I've got MyBook 2 * 6TB Thunderbolt attached to my MacBook Pro (with SSD HD) - and I found there to be a HUGE speed jump from USB2 and slight from USB3.
But what really crunched it for me with Thunderbolt was the daisy chain option..
I got my Internet cable (firewire to Thunderbolt attached to one of the MyBook's, then from that attached to the next MyBook, which then goes to my external screen and that is attached to one thunderbolt drive on my MacBook.
So instead of having three or four USB cables attached to my machine.. I only got one.
I'd be happy to recommend Thunderbolt - whether it's an overkill price-wise that's up to each person to decide, but from my own experience.. 8GB files move rather swiftly between A and B :)
 
My son who is doing an Audio/Visual degree at Bolton opted for TB drives as he gets a good consistent transfer rate on his MBPro & IMac. Network drives are OK but as you said unreliable buy better if using a LAN cable rather than wireless & OK usually for watching a film but for producing video a good consistent fast transfer rate is best. Another advantage is you can daisy chain reducing extra ports.
 
specialman said:
Although I can work in FCPX on video files that are on the HD, I will be storing all my video content on the external drive(s) at some point. Data transfer (i.e. copying files) isn't an issue - USB 3.0 is fast enough, although you can always do with faster can't you? - but I want the fastest speed from drive to iMac for when I work on files that aren't held on the iMac's HD. I'm just not sure if USB 3.0 will handle what could be big (2-6GB) video files, over a cable.
Click to expand...

I've got an iMac with FCPX on it. I've got some reasonably speedy large drives and a nice USB 3.0 enclosure*. Is there a test you'd like me to run for you?

ETA: when I say I have an iMac, I mean I have exactly the same iMac you do ;) Right down the the G-card and the drive.
------
* when I say "nice" it works fine, looks OK and cost me about 25 quid. Cheaper versions are probably available.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top