External Thunderbolt Drive?

[NoiseRoom]

Good morning,

I've been searching the DUC and web this morning to see if i could find an External Thunderbolt Drive that would work with my MacBook Pro running PT11.

There is a lot of discussion but I haven't found a clear answer.

Any help or direction would be appreciated.

Thanks

[JFreak]

Thunderbolt is just a road. You need to have a fast enough car.

Find a drive that has at least 7200rpm drive in it (not a "green" one), or a modern SSD which has good transfer rates.

[NoiseRoom]

Thanks, I'm just hoping someone can share an off-the-shelf solution that's been working for them.

[Bruce Paine]

If you already have any external drives that connect via FireWire, I would just get the Apple Thunderbolt to FireWire Adapter, available from the Apple store, OWC, and for $29 at Amazon.

This is what I use on my iMac, with 3 FW drives connected.

There are off the shelf Thunderbolt interface external drive enclosures, but to me they are still pretty pricey compared to the above solution.

[ronwasserman]

Originally Posted by OnlineRock

Good morning,

I've been searching the DUC and web this morning to see if i could find an External Thunderbolt Drive that would work with my MacBook Pro running PT11.

There is a lot of discussion but I haven't found a clear answer.

Any help or direction would be appreciated.

Thanks

I grabbed a LaCie 256GB TB drive (SSD) and it SCREAMS! Works great!

[bakerja]

I agree that thunderbolt options are too pricey but if I had an extra $800 laying around, I would have the drobo 5D. It holds 5 SATA drives. However, I decided to try USB3 docks with fast SATA hard drives. I picked up 2 Newer Technology Voyager S3's for $38 each. They work great for me at a fraction of thunderbolt prices. If you decide to go the USB3 route, be careful of some of the cheaper ones. They will not allow the drives to spin down with inactivity. The S3 does spin down.

[Bill Denton]

Originally Posted by bakerja

I agree that thunderbolt options are too pricey but if I had an extra $800 laying around, I would have the drobo 5D. It holds 5 SATA drives. However, I decided to try USB3 docks with fast SATA hard drives. I picked up 2 Newer Technology Voyager S3's for $38 each. They work great for me at a fraction of thunderbolt prices. If you decide to go the USB3 route, be careful of some of the cheaper ones. They will not allow the drives to spin down with inactivity. The S3 does spin down.

Typically you don't want drives that "spin down" with inactivity; those that spin down are what are typically referred to as "green" drives.

The reason you don't want drives that spin down is it's the drive that determines when inactivity occurs. So, you spend 15 minutes setting up for a track, the drive has stopped, and when you press "record" the drive has to come up to speed and you can lose data.

Did I misread you or are you saying your drives do spin down?

[bakerja]

No, I WANT them to spin down. Not necessarily after 15 minutes though. I have not had a drive spin down while in an active session yet. But, with the other interface that does not allow sleep, on of my 2tb drives was getting extremely hot because it was spinning 24/7. These are not server rated drives and will probably not stand up to that kind of abuse for long. My studio does not run 24/7 and when I shut down the session, I like my system to sleep also. With the voyager s3's, all is good.

[nst7]

Thunderbolt is overkill for an audio drive, as it doesn't need the speed and bandwidth. USB3 or firewire is fine.

For whoever mentioned the Drobo, their products ate RAID only, and JBOD is better for things like this.

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by bakerja

No, I WANT them to spin down. Not necessarily after 15 minutes though. I have not had a drive spin down while in an active session yet. But, with the other interface that does not allow sleep, on of my 2tb drives was getting extremely hot because it was spinning 24/7. These are not server rated drives and will probably not stand up to that kind of abuse for long. My studio does not run 24/7 and when I shut down the session, I like my system to sleep also. With the voyager s3's, all is good.

You never want a drive to spin down. If your studio does not run 24/7 than how are your drives spinning 24/7? When you shut down a session you should also shut down the system and not let it sleep. PT does weird things when you let the computer it's running sleep. Amongst other things the computer can lose communication with whatever peripherals it's hooked up to, be they drives, audio I/O, etc.