Thunderbolt HDD

wave100

Is anyone able to recommend a portable Thunderbolt drive for my late 2012 retina MBP? I currently have a USB3 drive attached via a USB 3 hub, but it's crapping out with surprisingly small projects - like 10 - 12 tracks. The hub otherwise has my MIDI controllers and Cubase dongle attached, however I thought that I might get better results using a dedicated port - and seeing how my MBP only has two USB ports, Thunderbolt seems the way to go.

Ta muchly.

octatonic

Most portable thunderbolt drives are 5400rpm which isn't ideal.
Is there a reason you can't use a desktop (powered drive) drive?

This is a 7200rpm portable thunderbolt drive.
I haven't used it, but I have got several G-Tech desktop Thunderbolt drives and they are quality.

guitarfishbay

If you have an SSD internal just record to that.  It's what I do.  I use externals for holding stuff I'm not working on, stuff that doesn't need to load instantly, and samples.

I have an external 7200rpm thunderbolt G drive for my samples, not the same one as in Octatonic's link, but I guess it must be similar in performance.  Everything else goes on bog standard 5400rpm externals, it's pretty cheap to get them these days - 1tb usb3 can be found for about £50

Danny1969

A USB 2 drive can comfortably handle 30 tracks or so ... I think your problem is the hub 

Recording to the internal SSD will be fine too 

wave100

Just to add, there isn't really much reason for not using a powered drive - it's just nice to be mobile for those occasions when I'm away from home...

wave100

Well I just downloaded Blackmagic Disk speed test - results are quite surprising, through the hub I get 73 write and 97 read and if I plug the drive direct to the USB port I get 90 write and 82 read (MB/s)

As I'm usually only recording one track at a time it looks like I am better off keeping the drive attached via the hub. Who'd a thunk it?

The drive is a 2TB Seagate backup plus formatted into two partitions, one of 500 gig for Time Machine and the remainder as FAT 32 for PC compatibility. Would this affect the speed in any way?

Thanks for your replies so far, Octatonic I'll have a think about that drive...

Stuckfast

I agree you're better off recording to the internal SSD and using external drives for backup and archiving. The internal drive is much faster than any external drive, and silent too.

Do you actually have Time Machine switched on while you're using the drive for audio? That could well be causing problems.

wave100

Good point @Stuckfast, i'll try it with TM switched of!