using thunderbolt drive as a streaming drive

[edencane]

Hi.

Im sure there are threads on this but a search didnt turn anything immediate up...
So, since Im running an Imac with PT10 from a single drive and since the documentation recommends using a separate drive for your music and mixes etc.... I thought Id look into getting a Lacie 4TB: http://store.apple.com/us/product/H8...aid-hard-drive ... they have 327 Mbits/sec throughput, which is very fast...

Do any of you have a setup where you stream from a thunderbolt drive...?
What are the things to look out for...?
Is it even a good idea...?

If there's other threads out there that deal with this, and you know about them, could you point me to them...

Thanks.

Best.Luke

[KMcK]

Stay away from RAID drives. LaCie is also not a very reliable brand, pretty notorious for overheating, at least their old FW drives did.

Can't help you with the Thunderbolt thing, sorry. In general however I would guess that FW800 drives are cheaper since there's a lot more of them out there, and FW800 has more than enough throughput for pretty massive sessions. OWC, Glyph and G-Drive are all pretty popular drives in the Pro Audio markets.

[Craig F]

10 with Extended Disk Cache enabled makes good RAIDs a viable option

[TimothyJohn]

An intriguing scenario involving Thunderbolt is the Seagate Goflex being advertised on the Apple site.
After extensive research, I found that this particular drive is 5400rpm-below spec. However, you get the thunderbolt interface and the thunderbolt cable included, along with the 1tb drive you could use for backup or whatever. Keep in mind, that this thunderbolt adapter is bus powered (it doesn't have a second thunderbolt port, so you'd have to place it at the end of the chain).

So we have 1 bus powered thunderbolt interface, 1 thunderbolt cable, and one Seagate 1tb 5400rpm drive @ $279 American.
But what about streaming audio? 7200rpm? Check this out at B&H. A GoFlex Pro 750gb, 7200rpm drive that comes with both usb2 and firewire 800 adapters--again, bus powered. $129 USD.

You take the 5400rpm 1tb drive out of the thunderbolt adapter and place it into the firewire 800 adapter or the usb2 for mac, and use it as a backup or sample drive or whatever. Then, put the 750gb, 7200rpm drive into the buss powered thunderbolt adapter and away we go!!!!

Total price? $408 USD less tax and shipping for a 1tb usb/firewire 5400rpm backup/sample drive, and a 750gb 7200rpm audio drive with thunderbolt connectivity. All Seagate drives----killer idea!!

Concerns? What about heat dissipation, and actual track count/plugin performance? The videos demonstrating the speed of the Seagate GoFlex Pro drives haven't been stellar, only mildly impressive. The cool thing though, is that Seagate is offering a paradigm involving interchangeable drives and interfaces, all bus powered, allowing us to access all of our ports simultaneously to address data storage and data streaming.

Anyone actually try the GoFlex/GoFlex Pro option with thunderbolt?

Kindly let us know!
Tim

[nst7]

It would be easier to get one of these:

http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?id=10574

and then hook it up to a drive with an Esata port like these:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other.../MEAQ7S1TB32M/

[TimothyJohn]

Originally Posted by nst7

It would be easier to get one of these:

http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?id=10574

and then hook it up to a drive with an Esata port like these:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other.../MEAQ7S1TB32M/

Except that it's not bus powered--which is a nice feature for field recording or mixing. Yes, the MacBook Pro gets hot, and running two drives and an interface will kill battery time, but it still is a very cool idea to record Pro Tools to a bus driven Thunderbolt drive through an Mbox, or Apogee Duet or One--all on battery. (even if only for an hour or so). I would be curious with the GoFlex Seagate drive as to heat issues, speed, data transfer rates, etc.

Tim

[nst7]

I wasn't thinking about the portability thing because the OP mentioned he had an Imac, so I didn't know if he was looking for a portable setup.

[getz76]

Originally Posted by nst7

It would be easier to get one of these:

http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?id=10574

I would avoid that Lacie product; pretty poor design. SATA 2 (3gb/s) instead of SATA 3, so you cannot take advantage of newer SSD drives.

If portability is not an issue, I would probably consider one of the Western Digital Thunderbolt drives and set it up as JBOD. Easily user serviceable, too. Buy the cheapest unit and swap the drives out with your own.