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Hi all,

I'm getting ready for a much needed uograde in gear, and am looking for good solutions for streaming my sound libraries. Looking for a 1TB external SSD and enclosure. Looking at either USB3 or Thunderbolt. Suggestions?

Thanks,

Loren

dunno about the enclosure other than I would check http://www.macsales.com (OWC) and pick whatever kind of connection you like (knowing that you can daisy chain 6 Thunderbolt peripherals together too).

As for SSD's - recently several of us bought the Samsung EVO 850 drives and they are quite inexpensive per GB, perform well, and have a good warranty (5 yrs).

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00OBR ... =pc&sr=1-2

as present, without going to a drive that might be cheaper but has shorter warranty period (Crucial etc) I think this is just about the best option out there. I have a Samsung 840 PRO 512 GB and 850 EVO 500 GB that are both streaming samples and they both work great (and the EVO is cheaper).

Awesome, Andy, many thanks.

Daisychain? So later on if I need more libraries on anoth drive, I can just chain them? In that case, I'll go with a Thunderbolt connection. Faster too.

ComposerLDG wrote:Daisychain? So later on if I need more libraries on anoth drive, I can just chain them? In that case, I'll go with a Thunderbolt connection. Faster too.

yes exactly.

with other connections it works too - like FW drives and interfaces often have 2 FW ports on them to allow you to plug a hard drive into the interface and plug that into the computer, but the Thunderbolt stuff is way faster than the old FW 400 and FW 800. When choosing an external enclosure, look for ones that have several ports on them. FW and Thunderbolt ports enable daisy chaining because both ends of the cables are the same. I don't think the USB ports support that as they have female and male ends.

Which you would choose depends on what you are using for the rest of the setup.

If your interface is USB, then you might get more bandwidth through the interface and the external drive if they were on separate busses.

You would have to do the fine reading on the iMac setup to see whether or not the 4 USB 3.0 ports are on a shared buss, or if they each have full USB 3.0 capacity directly accessing the CPU.

If they are shared, then using the T-bolt port would help.

OTOH if they all are different independent busses with full capacity you can mix and match USB and Thunderbolt drives and interfaces as you wish. At this point the USB 3.0 stuff is cheaper in general.

Thanks, Andy. Lots of information to process, but knowledge is good.

One thing I'm noticing is, USB3 is everywhere, while I'm having trouble seeing anything Thunderbolt.

ComposerLDG wrote:Thanks, Andy. Lots of information to process, but knowledge is good.

One thing I'm noticing is, USB3 is everywhere, while I'm having trouble seeing anything Thunderbolt.

probably because USB 3.0 is cheaper to produce.

Thunderbolt is made by INTEL and so likely has some hefty license fees.

From what I've been able to Google, Thunderbolt ports on Macs run at full bandwidth. Less clear are the four USB3 ports, which appear to share bandwidth, but all I could find is similar questions and no definitive answers.