A Tale Of Two Thunderbolt Storage Devices: Seagate's GoFlex Desk and Western Digital's Thunderbolt Duo
by Brian Dipert on May 13, 2012 7:52 PM EST- Posted in
- Thunderbolt
- Seagate
- WD
- Western Digital
Now that I know the WD Thunderbolt Duo is software RAID-based, I'm curious to fire it up with Windows 7, running natively on the Mac mini via Boot Camp. I should be able to RAID-configure it using Windows' Computer Management utility (specifically via the Disk Management section of the program).
Speaking of the GoFlex Desk, I'm also curious to tether multiple Seagate drives together via Thunderbolt, RAID them together using the O/S-supplied software, and see how their effective performance compares against that of the more integrated Thunderbolt Duo alternative. Amazon currently lists the 4 TByte Thunderbolt Duo at $550. Both Newegg and Staples, on the other hand, recently had the 2 TByte GoFlex Desk, complete with USB 3 dock, for $110.
At $190 for each Thunderbolt Adapter, a two-drive plus two-adapter Seagate combo currently isn't cost-effective compared to the Thunderbolt Duo, especially considering that the Seagate setup requires a second Thunderbolt cable at $49 from Apple. Should Thunderbolt Adapter prices notably drop, however, or should Seagate begin selling a drive-plus-Thunderbolt Adapter kit, the dual-Seagate drive solution would be more compelling from a pricing standpoint, and its faster-RPM HDD heart might deliver higher performance than the WD alternative to boot.
And of course there's also USB 3. My Mac mini doesn't support it, and there's no place for me to drop a USB 3 expansion module into this particular system. My Mac Pro, on the other hand, has plenty of spare PCI Express expansion slots, but no Thunderbolt capabilities. So in order to test one versus the other on the same platform, I'm clearly going to need some new system hardware. Fortunately, my birthday was a few days ago...and I'm not opposed to buying myself a present, even after-the-fact...
As mentioned on the previous page, I've assembled a ZIP'd archive of directories containing both graph screenshots and text reports of all the AJA System Test iterations I ran, which you can download here. Comments are as always welcomed.
It's liberating to work with an external HDD that isn't performance-hampered versus its internal bus-tethered counterpart. That's what a high-speed interface such as Thunderbolt delivers. And unlike with eSATA, you can use that same port to connect up a high-resolution display, too. Windows-preferring folks who want to tap into Thunderbolt's potential are currently hardware-hampered; pretty your only option (aside from a few Ultrabooks) is to buy a Mac and a copy of Windows, and install the latter using Boot Camp.
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name99 - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
"Given that the PCI Express channel of the Thunderbolt interface delivers 10 Gbps of peak bandwidth in either direction, I next decided to see what would happen if I tethered the Seagate and WD drives together."You can do even better than this. You should have been able, in Disk Utility, to create a striped drive consisting of the two WD drives and the Seagate drive. This would be gated by the speed of the slowest drive, so should give you around 360MB/s read and write speeds.
Disk Utility is not perfect, and god knows I've sent Apple long lists of ways it can be improved; but it is pretty awesome for basic things like creating either striped arrays or large concatenated arrays.
bdipert - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
Dear name99, that's a great idea. I'm traveling at the moment but will give it a shot when I get back in front of the Mac mini. I agree with you that it conceptually should work, and will be performance-gated by the drives in the Thunderbolt Duo.Torrijos - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
You talked a bit about the impact of running a soft-RAID device being negligible, it would be nice to know the impact on the OS when pushing those mass storage devices to the limit.I've bought an USB3 extension card for my mac and while transfer speed are great, OS responsiveness takes a hit every time a big transfer occurs (TM backups are a pain).
A formal test of the impact of USB 3, ThunderBolt would be nice.
repoman27 - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
Have you watched Activity Monitor during a TM backup to see what's being stressed? I usually associate the performance drop during TM backups with the crazy amount of small random reads that need to be performed on the system volume while you're still trying to use it.Draconian - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
So basically, if you're really concerned about performance, an SSD using an old 3 Gbps connection will read and write twice as fast as a HDD using a Thunderbolt connection?I would be interested in knowing what the results would be with a HDD using an eSATA connection. And of course USB 3.0.
jabber - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
......companies selling 7N Thunderbolt cables that cost them $3 to make but selling them to audiophiles for $3000 a go.Glindon - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
Each connector of the thunderbolt cable has a small chip, which is why the cable costs so much. It's not just a $50 cable. iFixit has done a tear down of the cable if you want to check it out.repoman27 - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
There are quite a few factors which make Thunderbolt cables expensive, being an active design is just one of them. If you ignore the bit about Thunderbolt being intended for iOS devices, the following blog post reveals quite a few details:http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2012/0...
I think the snake oil salesmen that prey on the audiophiles will avoid Thunderbolt for some time, specifically because it is an expensive to manufacture, high bandwidth cable that can't be made for $3. A 2.0 m copper pipe that can carry 20 Gbps, full-duplex, plus bus power and out-of-band signaling just doesn't exist yet in the sub $20 realm.
quiksilvr - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
You pay an arm and a fucking leg for these things and they don't even have the god damn decency to give you the wire?CalaverasGrande - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
Just like on the MAc centric forums, people can not look past their narrow usage scenario to accommodate other perspectives.I work at a TV station, but have a background in audio production. In most prosumer studios, and quite a few mid level studios, firewire is the connection of choice for audio interface (soundcard). The high end audio interfaces have until recently all been either a PCIe card or Firewire. Add to the pile firewire based DSP such as the UAD-2 and firewire disk arrays used to insure fault tolerant and fast nearline storage.
In video production we really don't use 1394 anymore. But there are still some old boxes in use that have the mini connector. Often they get pressed into use as a transcoder or layback machine for formats we dont use natively anymore. We are all on Sony XDcam disk, which I would love to see as a consumer format!
I personally can't wait to see wider adoption of thunderbolt. I plan on upgrading to a T-bolt equipped mac after the next refresh of the MBP line.