Thunderbolt or USB3 external drive for MBpro retina display

[magnas]

I've a Retina Display MB pro, with a lot of 2.5 external HD USB3 7200 rpm drives.

When I use DP for big project (Ivory II, Trilian, Omnisphere, Stylus, 6 Kontakt with 8 instrument each one, ez-drum etc...) the session becomes really slow with a lot of drops... The problem is that with only 250GB of HD is not possible have the sample in the internal laptop's SSD drive.

Then I bought an external HD 7200 usb3 (750 gb) only for the samples library... I've to see that for a small medium projects it's ok... but now with big project working is not possible ...

Then I was thinking to buy an external drive thunderbolt (2.5"), but before to buy I need some tips from us. For example... somebody did a comparison with a usb3 and thunderbolt external 2.5 HHD? The thunderbolt 3.5 driver are more speedy that the 2.5? Is it better buy an external drive SSD (for sure yes... but too much expensive).

Otherwise a solution is to sell my retina display and buy the model with 500 gb HD (or better the 1TB one, but it's too much expensive).

Another thing... I've trouble with my usb3 external drives... a lot of time they disconnect without reason... I'm the only one or it's a problem with the usb3 devices?

[mikehalloran]

With a mechanical drive, there is no speed difference among eSATA, USB 3 and TB. The platter speed is your bottleneck. All three are much faster than USB 2 or FW. The exception is multiple drives in a RAID configuration.

With single SSDs, TB is the fastest, followed by USB 3, then eSATA.

To approach the theoretical 10G speed of TB, you need to use multiple drives configured in RAID, otherwise, you are limited to the 6G or 3G limit of the SSD or the platter speed of mechanical drives. Which flavor of RAID is best determined by your needs and what the TB rack will support.

Having said that, your biggest bang for the buck is a 1G SSD 6G in a USB 3 dock. This can be had well under $700. It should do what you want.

USB 3 dock
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/NewerTec ... Drive_Dock

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/internal ... olid_State

Some of these high capacity drives are under $600

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-dri ... -Notebook/