External Thunderbolt Enclosure Help.

Chandler_90 · 18 May 2014 at 11:51

Hi,

I've done a search and nothing really useful came up!

I have a 2012 Mac Mini, thus I do not have access to USB3 and would like some decent high speed external storage.

Thunderbolt is my only real option I suspect and so I am looking for an external enclosure.. as the external enclosure+drives are so damn expensive.

Anyone got any tips?

I've seen the Drobo Mini but at £530 I think that its a bit crazy.

As a 256GB SSD can be had for around £120 it seems like a much more sensible option.

Unless there is a thunderbolt to USB3 dock or something available?

Thanks for all help

Chandler_90 · 18 May 2014 at 15:59

I have enquired on an auction site about a Delock 42490 enclosure.. seems to offer a powered 2.5" HDD enclosure for a damn good price!

Chandler_90 · 24 May 2014 at 19:42

Quick update about this...

I've bought the enclosure from the auction site, expected delivery by the first week of June.

I've bought a 0.5m Thunderbolt cable, £25 is a joke imo.

This morning I won a 1TB Samsung 840 Evo SSD on the already mentioned auction site for £290 delivered, expected due date is also the first week of June.

Fingers crossed it all works.. I'll post benchies and part numbers once sorted incase this actually helps someone out.

rpstewart · 24 May 2014 at 21:23

Chandler_90 said:
I've bought a 0.5m Thunderbolt cable, £25 is a joke imo.

The problem with Thunderbolt cables is that they're not just cables, there's quite a bit of circuitry at either end. Couple that with the small market and Intel's licensing demands and you get that sort of pricing.

Chandler_90 · 24 May 2014 at 23:28

rpstewart said:
The problem with Thunderbolt cables is that they're not just cables, there's quite a bit of circuitry at either end. Couple that with the small market and Intel's licensing demands and you get that sort of pricing.

Yeah I read they had controllers built in, I was looking into getting a third party one but opted for the official apple cable.

Looking forward to all this arriving

Chandler_90 · 27 May 2014 at 08:55

Enclosure arrived today and it looks great.

However....... even though I specifically asked.. the unit does not come with a regular 3 pin UK adapter. It does however have interchangeable faces.

So..... the ratings are 12V, 2.5A AC...

Can I simply buy a 3 pin face and this will work in the UK?

I'm paranoid about stuff like this.. incase I get the voltages etc wrong!

Chandler_90 · 3 Jun 2014 at 23:55

Ok.. fully up and running now!

Speeds are incredible..

355MB/s Write
381MB/s Read

Really impressed.. took around 3 minutes to transfer 40GB!

I've also purchased a 500GB 5400RPM USB3/2 drive.. running in USB mode.. 20MB/s Write and 25MB/s Read really brings out the speed advantages of the Thunderbolt enclosure!!

If anyone has any questions feel free to ask

PoliticallyCorrect · 7 Jun 2014 at 13:06

the 2012 Mac Mini does have USB3.0. Nevertheless check out Lacie enclosure's, I have their rugged/orange thunderbolt 256GB SSD and since it's just a SATA-III connection inside the SSD can be upgraded easily.

Jonny

jonathanbruce · 10 Jun 2014 at 15:24

Chandler_90 said:
Ok.. fully up and running now!

Speeds are incredible..

355MB/s Write
381MB/s Read

Really impressed.. took around 3 minutes to transfer 40GB!

I've also purchased a 500GB 5400RPM USB3/2 drive.. running in USB mode.. 20MB/s Write and 25MB/s Read really brings out the speed advantages of the Thunderbolt enclosure!!

If anyone has any questions feel free to ask

What system are you running?
I have a inateck usb3 caddy for my samsung 840 std 250gb and I'm getting 250.8 MB/s write and 447MB/s read.. I would expect anything from 650 upwards for Thunderbolt on both.. I'm looking into getting a Thunderbolt2 drive with speeds again even faster!! There are controllers and controllers!! To me you have a slow interface behind the controller. I'm looking into buying the Lacie LittleBigDisk thunderbolt2.. check it out!

Chandler_90 · 11 Jun 2014 at 20:19

I'm on a Mac Mini from mid to late 2012.. I'm using Thunderbolt 1 and Mac OSX 10.9.3.

What could be the bottleneck?

jonathanbruce · 12 Jun 2014 at 23:14

Chandler_90 said:
I'm on a Mac Mini from mid to late 2012.. I'm using Thunderbolt 1 and Mac OSX 10.9.3.

What could be the bottleneck?

hmmm. Not sure, although I personally think through experience, that some usb3 controllers aren't that fast. I have a WD My Book 2tb using using usb3. That struggles to hit 120 read and 100 write. Then again I have a cheap caddy (bought locally) for my Hybrid 500gb Seagate Momentus and that did slightly better at 160 read and 135 write. Like I say the Inateck usb3 caddy with my std Samsung 840 250gb is smokin' on the stats. I have noticed that generally the rates for read and write are better on Macs than PCs.
I use my rMacbookPro 13" a lot, mainly for Photo editing and Adobe use. I"m a Creative Cloud subscriber so can use software also on my MacPro. My Windows PC doesn't get a look in these days(it is too slow for my Raw processing). Have a look on youtube for that Lacie product I mentioned. I'm seriously thinking of getting one of those, especially for my Mac Pro.