USB 3 or Thunderbolt storage and my general setup

antc

antc

Suspended / Banned
Messages
4,355
Name
Anthony
Edit My Images
Yes
Hi All,

I am looking to further sort out my storage options and have been looking at the above two technologies. Do you guys have either of the above and how do you rate them for speed? I am looking at the idea of having my LR library and images on an external drive ran in perhaps raid 1 to give me a little redundancy (not a backup) so keep my system drive free of things incase it was to go down. Idea being just to have the OS and apps installed onto the system drive. This would also potentially allow me to have a smaller system drive.

Im really not sure at this point of the best way to go with things, I am currently running a 2010 iMac 27inch (usb 2) and a MBP 2011 15 inch which has a single Thunderbolt port. My conundrum at this point in time is that my thunderbolt enabled Macbook is thunderbolt 1, my iMac has neither thunderbolt nor usb 3. These machines will perhaps be due for a refresh next year and I have been thinking of either going for a new MBP only, or perhaps building a PC again.

Would be interesting to hear your thoughts on what you think is the best way to go, of course it would be ideal that any storage I buy now would be as future proof as possible.
 
neil_g said:
IMO..

Thunderbolt is overpriced for one or two mechanical drives. sure if youre running a large array and/or ssd then go nuts.
Click to expand...

I did kinda think that to be honest, as a comparison a my book 8tb enclosure usb 3 was in the region of £270 where as the thunderbolt version of the same drive was £400.

At the moment I have a drobo but its so painfully slow (Drobo FS) had it years I'm in two minds what to do. I would like my storage to be a lot faster, well at least some of it, hence thinking a DAS option maybe a good one.
 
I've been using a startech DAS for a while (4 bay, raid capable, USB3/eSATA), granted as a backup device rather than working drive.

give me 2 secs and I'll check the transfer speeds.
 
neil_g said:
IMO..

Thunderbolt is overpriced for one or two mechanical drives. sure if youre running a large array and/or ssd then go nuts.
Click to expand...

'xactly. Also, when Apple get bored of TB and swap to another "standard" you're screwed ;)

USB3 works great for me.

BTW I had a world of pain trying to get a RAID DAS that worked reliably on Mac USB 3. I gave up in the end after a couple failed. I think there were some non standard things in the way OS X implemented USB3.
 
JonathanRyan said:
'xactly. Also, when Apple get bored of TB and swap to another "standard" you're screwed ;)

USB3 works great for me.

BTW I had a world of pain trying to get a RAID DAS that worked reliably on Mac USB 3. I gave up in the end after a couple failed. I think there were some non standard things in the way OS X implemented USB3.
Click to expand...

Cheers Jonathan. So what do you use for your setup, data etc?
 
Also one point to note as I have been researching, both my iMac and MBP have a Firewire 800 port which should be roughly twice as fast as the usb 2 ports on both machines. I have been wondering if this maybe an alternative way to go at the moment with the machines I have until I upgrade. One of the units I have been taking a look at also has usb 3 on it too, which will come in handy as you guys have mentioned above, once I get myself a more updates Mac or PC with usb 3 on it.

This is the Lacie drive I looked at - http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/..._rd_t=36701&pf_rd_p=577049067&pf_rd_i=desktop
 
JonathanRyan said:
'xactly. Also, when Apple get bored of TB and swap to another "standard" you're screwed ;)
Click to expand...

I was speaking with a lady from LaCie the other day and she said that Thunderbolt is becoming more popular with PC users now. The new LaCie rugged drives have Thunderbolt and USB 3 and come in 1 or 2TB HDD and 256/512GB or 1TB SSD.

I'd still stick with USB 3, it should be more than fast enough for photos.
 
antc said:
Cheers Jonathan. So what do you use for your setup, data etc?
Click to expand...

I have a 1TB Fusion drive in the iMac which is Time Machined to the network. I also take manual backups of important stuff to a NAS. If I need more storage (for special projects or accessing old files) I use an IcyBox USB3 enclosure for legacy SATA drives or portable USB3 hard drives.

1TB is pretty much enough for me ;)
 
I've faced a similar query recently after getting a d810 thats eating up my storage fast.
late 2012 27" i7 iMac with 1TB fusion & 24GB ram
usb3 UASP startech case with WD 1TB Black
Synology DS415play
LR5


Most of LR's stuff is done with CPU & disk. (Edited)
It mainly hits the disk use when moving between images. It loads a preview and slowly resolves the detail.
Depending on how you work, you may or may not care about how long it takes to do this part.
On the 1TB Fusion it takes about 1 second to load a d810 raw file
On the external USB3 UASP drive it takes 4-5 seconds.
On some work I'll limit image processing to 20 seconds per shot so 4-5 seconds is infuriating and not viable. On work where I spend minutes/ hours, the few extra seconds are irrelevant.
Note that you can still work on the image whilst it is loading up the finer detail, so its not a major issue.
Also LR5 introduced smart previews where you can store a local smaller version of the file to edit the images on your faster local drive. Pros and cons as you are working with a lossy compressed preview file.

Knowing this, I'll probably move my 500MB iTunes library over to my 4 bay synology to free up some room on the 1TB fusion.
Then make smaller Lightroom libraries for each client that I can move from server storage over to the 1TB fusion whenever I need to work on it.
Personal LR work would be just fine on an external drive (obviously backed up in multiple locations)
 
Last edited:
For storage i'd presume that USB3 will be more than enough. The merits of Thunderbolt (The newest standard at least) Is that it's fast enough that you can daisy chain multiple devices (monitors, hard disks etc) and still not run out of bandwidth. If you're not doing that then USB is probably easier and the standard will be more compatible.
If you're going with Network storage then the speeds will be a bit slower for transfers with slower seek times. I keep my 2012-2014 catalogues running directly from my NAS, about 16000 photos. It does take a bit of time for it to initially create all the previews when importing, but when viewing a full size photo it isn't that slow to emerge, perhaps a second or two. My older NAS (3 years old) maxes out at about 40MB/S on my AC wireless. The newer 2-4Bays are around double the speed +
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top