Why I Don’t Buy Thunderbolt Hard drives

This is a beginner-to-intermediate look at Thunderbolt storage options. If you are a Mac user and looking to get into high capacity and performance storage, there are some things you need to know.

Let’s start with the simple math showing the cost difference for thunderbolt storage solutions and what you are getting out of it, these are the equivalent packages with only difference in spec being the IO ports.[[MORE]]

WD My Book Studio II – 4TB/$330 & 6TB/$430 – Includes 2x FW800, eSata, and USB 2.0

WD My Book Thunderbolt Duo – 4TB/$500 & 6TB/$600 – ONLY 2x THUNDERBOLT

$170 more for the same size storage, with less IO options, no measurable performance difference!

G-Raid – 4TB/$300 & 8TB/$700 – Includes 2x FW800, eSata, and USB 2.0

G-Raid Thunderbolt – 4TB/$620 & 8TB/$854 – ONLY 2x THUNDERBOLT

4TB version is $320 more for the same size storage, with less IO options, no measurable performance difference! Only $154 more in the 8TB flavor, the best bargain of the bunch by comparison.

Seagate GoFlex Portable Thunderbolt 1TB – $260

Seagate Backup Plus Portable USB 3.0 1TB – $100

$160 more, or 160% more! Granted, this is against the lowly USB 3.0 model, but USB 3.0 isn’t a slouch IO. You probably won’t notice a difference in regular use since the 1TB drive is probably 5400rpm. I won’t be buying any Seagate drives anymore so someone else will have to test this. Only one thunderbolt IO, so no daisy-chaining with this dog.

Long story short, you are paying a premium to remove universally available IO ports, and replace them with 2 that are only available on the latest Mac hardware (BUT NONE OF THE MAC PROS). This may be okay in many situations, but if this drive is going to be used anywhere other than YOUR Mac, you might be setting yourself up for a missed connection and a headache. I can’t afford to not be able to plug into a Mac Pro or even a PC when the need arises.

The WD and G-Tech drives are both RAID set-ups, meaning they each contain 2 hard drives working together, with 2 standard flavors. RAID 0 has data stripped across both drives, getting the maximum storage space and faster R/W speeds. RAID 1 has data mirrored so if one drive fails, no data is lost, and it takes a performance hit as it writing and reading between the drives for constant redundancy. Here is the thing, RAID 0 is DANGEROUS! It might be faster but if one drive fails, you are chasing ALL your data right to an expensive forensic fancy place to recover it. Use RAID 1 if you have important data, or back it up regularly.

I have both G-Tech and WD in non-Thunderbolt format and had the opportunity to test the thunderbolt version of the WD.

Both the WD and G-Tech perform similarly in RAID 1 & 0 configurations, G-Tech beat it out by only a small margin. They were all throttled by FW800 but seemed unhindered by the 3gbps of eSATA. G-Raid was pushing 2Gbps in RAID 0, the rest between 1-1.5Gbps.

The WD Thunderbolt Duo in RAID 0 performed less than 2Gbps R/W at sustained transfer, well within the reach of eSATA’s 3Gbps realm. It did however outperform the actual speed I was getting with my Studio II via eSATA (by about than 20-30mbps). So I’d venture to guess the G-Raid would fair slightly better, but still within the technical reach of eSATA. Basically, you aren’t going to get 10Gbps just because your IO can deliver it. That is the important fact to remember, a standard RAID 1/0 configuration with HDDs will probably never exceed 3Gbps. Still an excess of what most users needs are however.

Now, you have a Macbook, iMac, or Mac Mini and you don’t want to be stuck with FW800 if you know it’s the bottleneck (I never get more than ~500mbps out of FW800). You don’t have to shell out upwards of $160 per drive just to squeeze that performance! There are now IO hubs available and coming soon to alleviate this very need.

Currently available – LaCie eSATA Hub – $199 – An awkward little brick by Lacie, it’s the best product LaCie’s ever made if you ask me. With 2x Thunderbolt and 2x eSATA IOs, you can connect 2 drives via eSATA to your thunderbolt-equipped Mac and daisy-chain out to a monitor or other thunderbolt device without a hitch. I have this and love it, I might be getting another soon and I’m realizing that my only complaint is terrible external design. It’s not stackable, or even logically designed, it’s tall and thin like Lacie hard drives, which are built like haphazard dominos. But for few more bucks over the thunderbolt version, you can get the standard model w/ esata and have a highly functional system with space for another drive later.

Coming Soon (Sept. Release) – Belkin Thunderbolt Express Dock – $399 – While a bit pricer than the LaCie option, Belkin has made this a full-service docking platform with IOs up-the-wazoo! You get 2 Thunderbolt, one eSATA, 3 USB 3.0, Audio line in and out, FW800, HDMI, and Gigabit ethernet! Those 3 USB 3.0 ports are handy for anyone with a USB 2.0 Mac and is constantly getting thumb drives or USB hard drives that are most often 3.0 nowadays. One eSATA is kind of skimpy but it’s better than none, and the HDMI is a nicer bonus. And it still has Thunderbolt daisy-chaining so you can keep using that port!

Also, Apple just released their Thunderbolt to Firewire adapter for $29. This is probably going to be a need to own solution for Retina MBP owners that need fast way to use their old (and new) firewire hard drives that have USB 2.0 and eSATA, but no thunderbolt. It’s a small dongle so it’s worth having if you need a fast solution.

This was all an in-depth way of showing that Thunderbolt has lots of options coming it’s way, but right now you need to focus on the actual return on investment with Thunderbolt peripherals. If that little-to-no actual speed improvement in these drives is worth it to you, go for it, but be aware that the loss of IO options really locks you into a format not widely accessible just yet. 

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