External raid that works best with both macbook pro retina and old mac pro?

[Eirik Nicolai Heim]

I own a old mac pro, that I have upgraded enough to last a few more years, and I own the best new macbook pro retina for work out in the field.
I need the best external raid solution that works with both. I would like a 8-10 tb Thunderbolt raid from Lacie or G-tech, but as I understand, there is no way to use that on the old mac pro.
Then there is the next best solution, a usb 3/firwire 800 raid, from Lacie or G-tech with the same amount of storage, but that means for me usb 3 on the retina and firewire 800 or usb 2 on the mac pro.
Usb 3 and raid 0 should be fast enough, but usb 2 or firewire 800 will be a bottleneck? I have an internal raid 0 on the mac pro. Will the only good solution be to transfer the data to the internal raid or is there a better solution?

I edit both on the mac pro and the retina, but I like to do the grading and the after effect work on the mac pro without transferring the data?


Any tips? Am I correct about my assumption about the usb 2/firewire 800 and that being a big problem?

 

[Derek Devine]

One thing I am considering is installing USB 3 cards in the mac pros. So far, black magic speed tests on single drives show USB and thunderbolt to be about the same . 110mbs for me. Take a look at G-tech. they have a 2 drive thunderbolt housing that takes two stand alone usb 3 drives. Individual drives are expensive for a 1tb (almost $200) but I guess you could opt to raid two of them together to get better performance. I have yet to see a single 2.5" thunderbolt drive perform significantly better than a USB 3. I guess Thunderbolt shines in RAID or SSD at least that's what I'm gathering from my research.

 

[Eirik Nicolai Heim]

I have an esata card that seems to work well, and I have installed a usb 3.0 card, but that seems to be not working after just one upgrade of the mac osx. The reason could be that I bought some cheap stuff from ebay. Maybe I should just go for the Caldigit card that has good reviews and also has both 2 x esata and usb 3.0 and base my external drives on usb 3 for now?