I'm wondering what has been your personal experience with the data transfer rates of USB 3.0 and apple's new thunderbolt port. Online are the specs but I was just curious about people's overall experience with each. This will also allow me to see whether it's worth getting a mac over windows for video editing.
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How does USB 3.0 compare to Thunderbolt port?
- Thread starter dorian2786
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USB 3.0's data cap is a little over 500MB/s. I understand Thunderbolt is higher than that, in the 1.5TB/s rate.
Now that's all theoretical really. For that to become an issue, you first need hard drives that go that fast. It'll depend more on how you're setting up the hard drives (unless you're using multiple SSD's in a raid - Then Thunderbolt may be your best option).
Usually you're best off not using external hard drives for editing.
That help?
Now that's all theoretical really. For that to become an issue, you first need hard drives that go that fast. It'll depend more on how you're setting up the hard drives (unless you're using multiple SSD's in a raid - Then Thunderbolt may be your best option).
Usually you're best off not using external hard drives for editing.
That help?
I'd actually say just the opposite - I've rarely known anyone to use internal drives for editing. If you need high performance than an external raid solution is generally going to be the way to go. The op didn't say what they'd be editing though - the reality is that for most everyday editing work these days an array may well be overkill, and the difference between thunderbolt & usb3 isn't likely to be significant.
usb3 vs thunderbolt
Dont bother with external thunderbolt I have MBP 2013 with usb3 and thunderbolt2 after experimenting with external hard disk drive 1 TB usb3 it worked satisfactorily on small projects but when rendering large files it lagged and caused fcp to become glitchy slightly but them I got an external 120gb ssd and it worked perfectly for rendering, make sure you get an ssd with 500mb/s read/write speeds. total cost should be around $120 US the speed difference between a thunderbolt external drive such as lacie is negligible. The speeds of thunderbolt and usb3 are only what the cable and computer can deliver but real world speed to an actual device are much slower expect around 250mbs/s for usb3 external ssd, make sure you plug it in using the supplied lead, I bought a aftermarket connector and then picked the best drive I could afford, this allows you to interchange ssd's as required rather than a complete unit which are more expensive but exactly the same or slower. Dont use an extension usb cable ie. male on one end and female on the other it reduces the speed back to usb 2. Transfer between thunderbolt to other devices may be faster mac to mac but network rendering is hard to set up correctly and fcpx doesn't allow for it.
Compressor wont do it either unless configured correctly.
This is what I have found anyway.
I hope they finally develop an external graphics card to make full use of thunderbolt. Hopefully that would enable faster rendering without the need to buy a Mac Pro or HP Z820 cheers
Dont bother with external thunderbolt I have MBP 2013 with usb3 and thunderbolt2 after experimenting with external hard disk drive 1 TB usb3 it worked satisfactorily on small projects but when rendering large files it lagged and caused fcp to become glitchy slightly but them I got an external 120gb ssd and it worked perfectly for rendering, make sure you get an ssd with 500mb/s read/write speeds. total cost should be around $120 US the speed difference between a thunderbolt external drive such as lacie is negligible. The speeds of thunderbolt and usb3 are only what the cable and computer can deliver but real world speed to an actual device are much slower expect around 250mbs/s for usb3 external ssd, make sure you plug it in using the supplied lead, I bought a aftermarket connector and then picked the best drive I could afford, this allows you to interchange ssd's as required rather than a complete unit which are more expensive but exactly the same or slower. Dont use an extension usb cable ie. male on one end and female on the other it reduces the speed back to usb 2. Transfer between thunderbolt to other devices may be faster mac to mac but network rendering is hard to set up correctly and fcpx doesn't allow for it.
Compressor wont do it either unless configured correctly.
This is what I have found anyway.
I hope they finally develop an external graphics card to make full use of thunderbolt. Hopefully that would enable faster rendering without the need to buy a Mac Pro or HP Z820 cheers
I talked to someone at the apple store the other day and they simply said that thunderbolt has consistent data transfer rates and they do not compete for speed when you have multiple thunderbolts transfers going.
