[ghporter]

RANT
Why the bleep are all Thunderbolt peripherals so bleeping expensive compared to non-Thunderbolt (i.e. USB 3) devices? LaCie charges $180 for a 2TB Thunderbolt external drive, but I can get a 2TB USB 3 drive for $69, and a 5TB USB 3 external drive for $150. Thunderbolt transfer rates are only twice USB 3 rates, so why are Thunderbolt devices almost 3 times as expensive? Why!?!?!?
/RANT

So where might I find a Thunderbolt external drive/enclosure/dock that isn't stupidly overpriced? I want to have a reasonably fast Time Machine setup for my MBP, but not one that makes me think it's made of finely crafted Himalayan plastics, and assembled on the thighs of young virgins....

[CharlesS]

You can't. Thunderbolt has been busy making FireWire look cheap since it came out, and it shows no sign of slowing down. You're probably going to be spending $200 just for the enclosure, and even then it's going to be one of those crappy ones with only one Thunderbolt port on it which cuts off the chain, preventing you from connecting any more Thunderbolt devices, or, ya know, a monitor. Something with two ports that lets you use Thunderbolt as it was designed will, of course, cost even more.

The thing that gets me is external PCIe enclosures. Thunderbolt itself is PCIe over an external connection, so you'd think that a box to convert that to standard PCIe would be the simplest Thunderbolt device ever. But you'll still pay $500-$1000 for those.

Thunderbolt in its current form is getting killed off, anyway — they're rebooting it soon as something based on the USB-C port. Maybe that version will have more success than Thunderbolt 1 and 2 have in keeping the prices sane, but I wouldn't hold my breath just yet.

If you're just looking for a Time Machine setup, I'd just go with USB, and be sure to get an enclosure that supports UAS (USB-attached-SCSI). UAS solves a lot of the problems with the old Bulk-Only-Transfer protocol that always made USB storage suck, and it's pretty darn speedy. And of course, the prices are about an order of magnitude less. As an additional bonus, the drive will work with all Mac models, and will do so for the foreseeable future, whereas with Thunderbolt you never know if it'll still be on the next generation (they've removed it from the new MacBook, for instance).

Here's the one I have:

VANTEC NST-366S3-BK Black External Enclosure - Newegg.com

There are a bunch out there, though. It's a little tricky to figure out which ones support UAS, though. Sometimes it helps to look at the chipset it uses — those can usually be used to figure out whether the chipset supports UAS or not.

BTW, If you're unsure about whether a USB 3.0 enclosure you have supports UAS, just go to Extensions in the System Information app, and look for the IOUSBAttachedSCSI extension. If it says it's not loaded before you connect the drive (reboot the computer with all USB devices removed if it's loaded), and then shows up as loaded after you connect the drive, then you're in business.

[ghporter]

Thanks, Charles. That enclosure looks great.

USB-attached SCSI doesn't require any specific hard drive, does it? I hadn't heard of it before and had to look it up.

[OreoCookie]

I would also recommend you have a look at a NAS: a little more expensive, but you get a lot more than just a hard drive. I recently bought a Synology DS214+, and it works damn great. You no longer have to plug in the hard drive, you can offer services to your wife and children, too. A 2-bay DS214se costs $150 on Newegg. You can also get a 1-bay NAS for $100, but I'd get a 2-bay system even if you plan to populate only 1 bay initially. Note that you can also connect external hard drives and share them on the network, too. The key to a NAS is software, and Synology seems to be the best of the bunch.

Regarding speeds, for backups, accessing movies and even copying decently large files it's plenty fast.

[flmiller]

One caveat regarding NAS - don't use it for a Time Machine disk (regardless of what the manufacturer says) or for an iPhoto or Photos library. Other than that, they're great.

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by flmiller 

One caveat regarding NAS - don't use it for a Time Machine disk (regardless of what the manufacturer says) or for an iPhoto or Photos library. Other than that, they're great.

Why? Synology supports TimeMachine backups out of the box. Works great. I only keep inactive Aperture libraries on my Synology for speed reasons.

[ghporter]

I imagine it's the lag from the network connection. In my experience, that's been a problem with all NAS storage. A device may "support" Time Machine, but you'll pay for it in time. Lots of time. That was the whole point in my looking for a Thunderbolt device - with USB 2, file transfers are awfully slow. My new MBP is the first thing I've had with USB 3, and I'm hoping the bump from UAS's improved efficiency makes it even faster than baseline USB 3.

I bought the device Charles suggested. It should be here mid-week. I'm currently looking at hard drives to put in it.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

Thanks, Charles. That enclosure looks great.

USB-attached SCSI doesn't require any specific hard drive, does it? I hadn't heard of it before and had to look it up.

Any old 3.5" SATA drive should do.

[ghporter]

That's what I'm looking for. I bought a Seagate 3TB external for my wife's MacBook a while ago, but it looks like it doesn't support anything beyond USB 3, so I went with the Vantec enclosure. Gotta find a 3TB drive on sale somewhere to keep the cost down, but I'm not in a huge hurry.

[P]

USB-attached-SCSI, for those who haven't heard of it previously, is a storage-specific optional extension to USB 3.0. Basically it makes USB storage work like Firewire storage, but it must be supported by the enclosure, the USB controller, and the driver in the OS for it all to work.

[CharlesS]

The enclosure supports it. I believe that all Macs that support USB 3.0 support it as well. All versions of OS X since Mountain Lion have the drivers for it, too, so you're all good.

[Mike Wuerthele]

@ghporter

When we find bargains, we post them in the deals post - we love us some storage bargains. I got a trio of 5TB drives in enclosures for $109 each not all that long ago, and shucked the enclosure. The drive itself still has a warranty through the manufacturer.

[CharlesS]

I did a little poking around, and I found:

WD Green : $84.95 Amazon.com: WD30EZRX Western Digital Caviar Green Hard Drive WD30EZRX: Computers & Accessories

Seagate Barracuda 7200.14: $89.99 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...9SIA5AD2TW2217

WD Green: $69.95 (marketplace, though): Western Digital Corporation WD25EZRX - Best Buy

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

That's what I'm looking for. I bought a Seagate 3TB external for my wife's MacBook a while ago, but it looks like it doesn't support anything beyond USB 3, so I went with the Vantec enclosure. Gotta find a 3TB drive on sale somewhere to keep the cost down, but I'm not in a huge hurry.

I would not recommend Segate drives, according to Backblaze's hard drive statistics, they are the least reliable by far. I paid a premium for my HGST NAS drives, but my data is worth it.

[ghporter]

Wow. HGST looks like the way to go.

[OreoCookie]

Scary thing is that I read the first of these statistics right after I bought a new external Segate hard drive My Synology houses 2 HGST NAS drives and my mind is much more at peace now.

[ghporter]

Newegg has a $20 off deal on the HGST 4GB, 7200RPM, 64MB cache Deskstar drive. I get free shipping and it's only $140. Wow.

Thanks, Oreo!

[OreoCookie]

You're welcome!

[CharlesS]

How did you end up liking it?

[ghporter]

The enclosure and drive are great. I have it set up 50/50 Time Machine and space for files (so my SSD doesn't fill up), and it's really nice having everything so available. And I have to admit that I'd been a slouch in the backup arena before. Not now, though. Just going to the trouble of setting up the Time Machine drive makes backups invisible.

Thanks for all the pointers, everyone.