Resolume Forum

Hello there,
I've got MBP with 250gb SSD drive and need more space to work with my VJ stuff.

Which external drive is better for video playback?
SSD external drive with USB 3.0 or LaCie with Thunderbolt
(or maybe there are some SSD with Thunderbolt drives?)

I do not pay much attention on capacity of external drive. Performance during live show and reliability are the most important things.

How do you deal with this problem?

Thunderbolt has more than double the bandwidth of usb 3.0. I suggest getting a thunderbolt external ssd.

What's your budget?

I'm a big fan of the new OWC Thunderbay Mini 4 with four 250GB Samsung SSD drives in Raid 1+0 for speed and reliability. You're looking at a good chunk of cash (~$900) but it's hard to beat! The advantage is that the enclosure comes with Soft Raid software and you can have multiple sets of disks.

An other favorite setup is a PCIe SSDs in an OWC Mercury Helios 2 chassis (PCIe enclosure) which is super fast and reliable and I typically pair it up with a Blackmagic Decklink duo card.

I run with a Lacie Rugged SSD 320Go thunderbolt, it's working like a charm.

Look the transfer rates

That's pretty good for a bus-powered drive but my issues with this kind of TB drive is that you lose one TB port and since it sounds like Jakguzik is on an older MBP, there might be no video output left.

The two setups I described in my previous post give you a TB pass through so you can still get video out of the same port.

To give you a sense of speed, here is what I get with three Samsung 850 EVO 250GB drive in Raid 0 in an OWC Thunderbay Mini 4 enclosure:
and here is what I get with a Sandisk Extreme 64GB USB 3.0 thumbdrive that cost $32.75 on Amazon:
You can now get the faster SanDisk Extreme PRO 128GB thumbdrive for $85 on amazon.

You can also get the new Samsung T1 Portable 500GB USB 3.0 External SSD for $220 and not lose a TB port.