by Kristian Vättö on 2/2/2012 2:00:00 PM
Posted in Storage , Seagate , Thunderbolt 
A few weeks ago at CES 2012, Seagate showcased their GoFlex Thunderbolt adapters. They come in two flavors: the GoFlex Desk Thunderbolt adapter takes 3.5" drives, requires an external power supply, and has two Thunderbolt ports; the GoFlex Thunderbolt adapter is suitable for 2.5" drives, is bus-powered, and has a single Thunderbolt port (i.e. no daisy-chaining).
The GoFlex Desk adapter won't be available until later this month, but Seagate has now updated their accessory page and started shipping the 2.5" GoFlex adapter. It's available from Seagate's online store for $100 (no cable included, so that's another $50), which is quite a lot more than a $15 USB 3.0 enclosure, but at least this is better pricing than the LaCie and Promise solutions we have seen so far. Unfortunately, you are still limited to using Seagate's GoFlex drives, but fortunately they are reasonably priced. By way of comparison, a solution using the GoFlex TB adapter and 1TB GoFlex external would cost around $230, whereas LaCie charges $400 for a similar setup.
UPDATE: It appears that a GoFlex drive is not needed and any 2.5" SATA drive should work.
MacWorld has already received a review unit and run a few basic tests. As you might have expected, Thunderbolt is noticeably faster than USB 2.0 but not much faster than FireWire 800. In terms of raw numbers, USB 2.0 had a maximum throughput of 33.7MB/s while FireWire and Thunderbolt had 70.3MB/s and 81.3MB/s respectively. Obviously, the 500GB 2.5" 5400rpm drive is the bottleneck here—the gap would be a lot bigger with a 3.5" hard drive, or better yet, an SSD.
To be honest, the GoFlex Thunderbolt adapter isn't really worth it unless you plan on using an SSD, which requires you to open the GoFlex enclosure and change the hard drive to an SSD, which is not supported by Seagate and may void your warranty. In the case of regular 2.5" hard drives, you're better off with the GoFlex FireWire 800 adapter ($50 from Seagate's online store and no $50 cable required), assuming you have a Mac with FireWire 800—otherwise USB 2.0 should be sufficient as well. For those not using Mac hardware, Thunderbolt may have more bandwidth, but right now USB 3.0 is a far more economical solution.
Source: Seagate
Print This Article 
16 Comments View All Comments Post a Comment Not worth it over USB 3.0 by ndelgrande on Thursday, February 02, 2012 The cost of Thunderbolt just isn't worth it to me over USB 3.0. I built a 4TB RAID5 4 disk USB 3.0 enclosure for under $500. USB 3.0's 4.5 Gbps of throughput is fast enough for me. Yes Thunderbolt is twice as fast over copper and even faster over fiber, but right now the storage options are just way too expensive for what you get. I can push data to my USB 3.0 enclosure at 200-300M/B a sec. Price/performance is much better with USB 3.0. 
ndelgrande Reply RE: Not worth it over USB 3.0 by zorxd on Thursday, February 02, 2012 You probably wouldn't get anymore speed with thunderbolt. The limiting factor is still the hard drives themselves. 
zorxd Reply RE: Not worth it over USB 3.0 by repoman27 on Thursday, February 02, 2012 For connecting just one or two spinning disks, I'm not sure Thunderbolt will ever make sense, unless you happen to own a 2011 MacBook Air. They will most likely be the only PC's ever sold where the only external I/O options are USB 2.0 and Thunderbolt.I'm guessing that Seagate reckons that people will buy these because they are essentially just powered Thunderbolt to SATA adapters, so they can easily be used with any SSD's you might happen to have lying around. Unfortunately, even if Seagate is using a SATA 6Gbit/s controller in this product, it's unlikely that Mac OS will have native driver support and so it will end up only operating at 3Gbit/s.
For the record, Thunderbolt provides 5x the bandwidth of USB 3.0 over a single cable. Even if you only consider its PCIe throughput capabilities, it's still 2.5x faster than USB 3.0. However, Thunderbolt would be no faster over fiber than it is over copper. Until we get faster Thunderbolt controllers, fiber will only allow for longer cable runs.
repoman27 Reply RE: Not worth it over USB 3.0 by KPOM on Thursday, February 02, 2012 @Repoman, I believe that OS X has support for SATA III. OWC sells 6Gbps blade SSDs for the MacBook Air and 2.5" drives for the MacBook Air, and I thought users have reported double throughput speeds compared with the stock 3Gbps drives. 
KPOM Reply RE: Not worth it over USB 3.0 by repoman27 on Friday, February 03, 2012 Yes, all Sandy Bridge Macs have SATA 6Gbit/s. However, the only SATA 6Gbit/s controllers that Mac OS X natively supports are the ones included in the Intel chipsets that Apple has used thus far. Third party vendors of SATA PCIe add in cards for Mac Pros have also developed drivers for the controllers that they utilize, but these are often bound to specific hardware.Folks that bought the HDD based LaCie Thunderbolt Little Big Disk and swapped in SSD's found that although it worked, the Marvell 88SE9182 6 Gbit/s controller was only recognized by Mac OS as an "Unknown AHCI controller", and was only able to negotiate 3 Gbit/s connections.
repoman27 Reply GoFlex SATA Connector by crazzyeddie on Thursday, February 02, 2012 Just as an FYI, apparently the GoFlex contains a standard SATA connector, so one could easily use this with any available 2.5" or (with a small extension cable and external power) 3.5" drive.http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=1425059...
crazzyeddie Reply RE: GoFlex SATA Connector by Kristian Vättö on Thursday, February 02, 2012 Thanks, I have updated the article. Weird that I missed that thread and article totally, I should start spending more time in the MacRumors Forums again (FYI, I'm Hellhammer from the forums - a moderator and +20,000 posts :P). 
Kristian Vättö Reply Ugh by dagamer34 on Thursday, February 02, 2012 Just make a $100 Thunderbolt to USB 3.0 adapter already. -_- 
dagamer34 Reply RE: Ugh by Malih on Friday, February 03, 2012 Exactly, I'm curious as to why there doesn't seem to be any Thunderbolt USB 3.0 Hub out already. 
Malih Reply Why bother? by joel4565 on Thursday, February 02, 2012 I still don't understand why companies are trying to push hard drives in the Thunderbolt market when they have very little advantage over USB3. The only things thunderbolt could be really useful for are single cable dock stations, external video cards, and multidrive nas. Anything else, the speed advantage is not going to overcome the price difference, not to mention the fact that almost no computers ship with Thunderbolt yet (excluding Apple). 
joel4565 Reply Subject Comment Post Comment 
User Name Password Remember me? Login
1 2 Next » View All Comments Post a Comment 
Follow AnandTech 
Latest from AnandTech Pipeline Submit News! Intel Updates Sandy Bridge Graphics Drivers Google Releases Chrome For Android Nokia Announces White Lumia 800 Droid 4 Available February 10th for $199 AMD Announces Turks Based FirePro V3900 LG's G6 Series: A New Kind of Google TV Partnership Clevo Refreshes X7200 With X79-Based P270WM, AVADirect First in Line Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet Gets Ice Cream Sandwich in May CDMA/LTE Galaxy Nexus 4.0.4 Update Changes Signal Reporting Micron CEO Steve Appleton Dies in a Plane Crash AMD: The Flexibility is in the Fabric Motorola Droid RAZR, RAZR MAXX Update Enables CDRX for Better LTE Battery Life DailyTech Ex-Acer CEO Slapped With Lawsuit for Joining Lenovo Quick Note: PlayBook 2.0 Calendar, "Bridge" Smartphone Control Demoed Quick Note: Google Launches Chrome Browser for ICS Smartphones, Tablets Bush Defends Auto Bailout Amid Romney Attacks Woman Ordered to Decrypt Laptop in Bank Fraud May Have "Forgotten" Password 2/7/2012 Daily Hardware Reviews China Prepares to Fine Apple, Possibly Ban iPad for Trademark Abuse Fisker Loses Access to DOE Loan, Lays Off Delaware Factory Employees Nikon Announces 36.3MP D800, D800E D-SLRs GM Makes eAssist Hybrid Standard on Buick 2013 Regal, Still Lags Behind Competition HTC Prepares Quad-Core Edge, Razor-Thin "Ville" to Fight Sinking Revenue Anonymous Spies on Secret FBI Conference Call, Posts Audio Clip Woman Receives World's First Complete 3D Printed Lower Jaw Implant 2/6/2012 Daily Hardware Reviews -- Intel 520 240GB SSD Edition AMD Concedes Die-Shrink Race to Intel, Considers ARM Cores Google Hires Former Senior Apple Director for "Secret" Project Corning, Samsung Mobile Display Announce OLED Glass Partnership Twitter RT @anandtech: Intel SSD 520 Review: Cherryville Brings Reliability to SandForce http://t.co/GaRoGhhE RT @nerdtalker: I strongly believe we need a barebones search engine alternative that cares about objective result quality and not pushing it's own services RT @anandtech: Understanding AMD's Roadmap & New Direction http://t.co/eySXYtz3 @anexanhume already did :) http://t.co/MNY0RArM RT @anandtech: AMD's 2012 - 2013 Server Roadmap: Abu Dhabi, Seoul & Delhi CPUs http://t.co/ohG0B8BE RT @anandtech: AMD's 2012 - 2013 Client CPU/GPU/APU Roadmap Revealed http://t.co/zqYWKdRS 
Copyright © 1997-2012 AnandTech, Inc. All rights reserved. Terms, Conditions and Privacy Information.
Click Here for Advertising Information
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment