What is the fastest thunderbolt 2 hard drive

#What is the fastest thunderbolt 2 hard drive portable#

IвЂ™ll take the LaCie Rugged line as an example as itвЂ™s quite a clear product line, but you can do the same with any brand that has a large portable hard drive selection. Stick to your guns вЂ“ if itвЂ™s not a RAID or SSD it usually wonвЂ™t be a fast portable drive. This is largely dueВ to manufacturers that continue to push buzz words like the maximum speed of the Thunderbolt protocol when trying to sell a new hard drive. Without having a complete understanding of all of these aspects, trying to figure out which drives out there are fast can become overwhelming. However, options above 1TB can still beВ quite pricey.

SSDs used to be quiteВ expensive, althought theyвЂ™re gradually coming down in price. Because of the need for multiple drives to formВ a RAID system,В RAID 0 portable drives are actually quite scarce, but theyвЂ™re starting to surface gradually. The topic ofВ RAID configurations can beВ an article unto itself, but for nowВ IвЂ™ll simply mentionВ RAID 0: a configuration that combines two drives to exploit their combinedВ capacity and speed. You therefore must pick a hard drive that has a fast transfer protocolВ (USB 3.0, Thunderbolt 2) as well as a physically fast hard drive.Д«asically speaking, a fast portable drive will be either an SSD drive (solid state drives that donвЂ™t spin) or, alternatively, a RAID-configured system of drives вЂ“ a Redundant Array of Independent Disks. non-SSD) wonвЂ™t give you transfer rates much higherВ than 130MB/s. Portable hard drives are nearly always disks 2.5вЂќ in size, and these single spinning disks (i.e. Probably the most important factor is the speed of the actual hard drive. The hard truth, however, is that thereвЂ™s always another bottleneck. But this is only the maximum speed of the protocolВ if there is no other bottleneck along the data pipeline. Often, people will just grab a Thunderbolt drive as this is a fast protocol, with Thunderbolt 2 offering up to 20Gbps. When taking into consideration the speed of a hard drive, you must consider two factors вЂ“ the speed of the transfer protocolВ and the speed of the physical hard drive. USB 3.0 is a transfer protocol with a data rate of up to 5 Gbps that uses a selection of physical USB type connections, whereas USB-C is a physical connection, not a transfer protocol, and doesnвЂ™t necessarily guaranteeВ a fast connection).

In the scope of this article, a transfer protocol refers toВ the speed of data transfer (e.g. On many occasions one will be backing up remotely, so a portable bus-powered drive is a must.ДЄlso, there is some ambiguity around a driveвЂ™s physical connection versus its transfer protocol. In this article IвЂ™m only going to discuss portable hard drives вЂ“ by this I mean those that are bus-powered and donвЂ™t require AC power. ItвЂ™s a simple concept, and one IвЂ™m sure a lot of you know already, but I still encounter many people that donвЂ™t, so hereвЂ™s the worst-kept secret of portable drives.

ThereвЂ™s more to it than just picking a drive with a fast transfer protocol. The bad news is that just grabbing a set of Thunderbolt hard drives wonвЂ™t solve your woes. So letвЂ™s say youвЂ™re in the marketВ for a couple of fast portableВ drives for on-set backup. It can be a right pain at the end of the day waiting for data to transfer onto multiple drives. The evolutionВ of modern filmmaking technology (4K, advanced data rates, multi-camвЂ¦) also comes with otherВ considerations, such as the speed of on-site backup. Need a fast portable drive to back up footage? Just grab a Thunderbolt oneвЂ¦ right? ThereвЂ™s a bit of a myth behind this вЂ“ a fast portable drive is much more than just a fast connection.

What is the fastest thunderbolt 2 hard drive