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Hello all,

I'm doing some research and wondering if anyone is using one of those new thunderbolt drives to stream samples. Would love to hear how it's working for you and how you've got it set up. Finishing putting together 2 new MAC Mini with VE PRO 5 and thinking about adding a thunderbolt drive to one of them. Or maybe it can be shared between the 2??

You might want to consider purchasing a USB 3 external HDD. From what I've been researching so far, they're fast (making sure that the HDD is at least 7200 RPM, of course) and are "full duplex" (which, apparently, the USB 2 enclosures are not "full duplex"). Now that the price for the MacMinis are somewhat reasonable ($799 for the i7 MacMini), I'm considering purchasing one, maybe two, to use as dedicated slave computers to my happy Early 2009 MacPro. If I was to do this, I'd also invest in the USB 3 HDD enclosures which are also fairly reasonable in price.

However, I've recently seen reasonably priced Thunderbolt-based HDD enclosures. Decisions, decisions.

USB 3 transfer speed is 5 Gbps while Thunderbolt is 10Gbps not sure if it's overkill to go for Thunderbolt but faster is better if you can afford it I'd think.

Not a lot of choices for Thunderbolt drives right now, especially ones with 7200rpm drives. Plus I'm really wondering if the faster speed of the Thunderbolt is in fact a benefit, after all the bottle neck is still the disk speed. I'm looking at USB 3 droves on OWC and I'm wondering if a mini stack would do. Anyone using one of those?

If you don't have huge size requirements for storing your sample libraries, I think a great solution is an empty external USB3 enclosure or 2 with a 512gb SSD drive inside each one.

The crucial 512GB ssd is now under $400.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/control ... &A=details

From what I've read the read speeds are critical for sample streaming performance, and SSD rocks for this.
I'm still on 7200 rpm SATA myself and getting by ok, but the future direction is obvious here.

I will probably stick my SATA drives in a Lacie 2Big Thunderbolt enclosure
when I buy my new music computer to hold me over until the SSD prices drop and capacities rise further.

I am using WD My Thunderbolt DUo enclosures with Velociraptor drives to stream Logic plugins. (Mostly Kontakt libraries) works very well.

2012 27" imac

I use the TB LaCie disk with a big TV screen hooked behind it through a TV to HDMI connector and so far it has been working very well.

ironchef_marc wrote:USB 3 transfer speed is 5 Gbps while Thunderbolt is 10Gbps not sure if it's overkill to go for Thunderbolt but faster is better if you can afford it I'd think.

You're talking about buss speeds - the drives themselves don't have transfer rates anywhere near these.

NazRat wrote:You're talking about buss speeds - the drives themselves don't have transfer rates anywhere near these.

Totally that's what I was saying no matter the buss speed the bottle neck remains the drive speed. i.e. if you have a thunderbolt drive but a 5400RPM drive in it, won't be as fast as an SSD drive in a USB3 enclosure(or even Firewire).