USB 3.0 vs Thunderbolt 2 transfer speeds

[JP Perry]

I'm trying to determine if thunderbolt shuttle drives are worth the significantly higher price.

Say I'm offloading RedMAGS with a USB 3.0 reader on my 2013 MacBook Pro. I'm offloading the files to a USB 3.0 shuttle drive. Will there be any performance improvement if I offload to a Thunderbolt drive, since this is on a different bus? Both drives are spinning at 5400 RPM.

 

[Jarek Zabczynski]

Nope. Thunderbolt will only speed up transfers if you are using SSD drives. In reality USB3 is also fine with SSDs. Redmags top out around 350MBps. The spinning drives are your bottleneck.

 

[Michael Tiemann]

The spinning drives are your bottleneck.

By a long shot!

 

[JP Perry]

Thanks guys. Another consideration: the MBP only has two USB ports, so I can only connect the reader and one drive at a time. With TB, I can use ShotPut Pro to offload to two drives simultaneously.

I wonder if there is sufficient power to connect two portable USB 3.0 drives with a hub?

 

[Jarek Zabczynski]

Thanks guys. Another consideration: the MBP only has two USB ports, so I can only connect the reader and one drive at a time. With TB, I can use ShotPut Pro to offload to two drives simultaneously.

I wonder if there is sufficient power to connect two portable USB 3.0 drives with a hub?

I use a TB2 to USB3 adapter for my reader and offload to two drives all the time. No power issues. I prefer staying away from hubs as sometimes Shotput would report errors on transfer.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1075056-REG

 

[JP Perry]

Good idea! Thanks! It's a pricey adaptor, but still much less expensive than using TB drives.

 

[Cameron Currier]

I use the same Kanex adapter and it's great. I'll plug in my reader via esata, now I can use my two USB3 ports for hard drives and my extra TB2 port for a third hard drive.

 

[Mike Halper]

I have a CalDigital TS-2 Thunderbolt 2 dock for sale in the marketplace. That should solve all your problems. Gives you 3 more USB 3.0 ports.

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?177070-CalDigit-TS-2-Thunderbolt-2-dock

 

[JP Perry]

Thanks guys. While we're on this subject, can you recommend a good 7200RPM bus powered USB 3.0 or USB-C drive? Seems like everything is 5400RPM.

 

[Jarek Zabczynski]

Thanks guys. While we're on this subject, can you recommend a good 7200RPM bus powered USB 3.0 or USB-C drive? Seems like everything is 5400RPM.

For what purpose?

If you’re looking for 2.5” portable drives, best bet is to build one. Most 7200rpm 2.5” drives top out at 1TB last I checked. Some enterprise ones at 2TB but aren’t worth the price tag.

I would be looking at SSDs at this point. 2.5” spinners are pretty much dead technology.

 

[JP Perry]

Thanks for those points and suggestions! I went with a couple of 1TB SSDs in enclosures.