thank you I am going to purchase a drive exclusively for the Mac, and probably will go with a combo thunder bolt and USB 3.0 C gate has one model reasonably priced under $200 which will power from the bus connection thus not requiring external power. Thanks for the information and thank you for taking the time, to answer my questions. Jesus Garcia
-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Chris Blouch Sent: Monday, April 15, 2013 10:58 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: External Hard Drive question Couple things here. As far as shared drive formats, most thumb drives come preformatted as Windows FAT32 which works under OSX as well. If the drive was formatted Windows NTFS or the like, as previously mentioned, OSX can only read the drive but not write to it. Likewise if you format it as MacOS Extended Windows won't be able to read it. So if you want your hard drive to work for both you'll need to reformat it as FAT32. If you erase the drive using OS Disk Utility they call it "MS-DOS FAT". Problem is that if you already have data on the drive, formatting is going to wipe that out, so best to do this from the getgo. I didn't research it but I suspect there are some performance or other limitations using FAT32 instead of native MacOS Extended. As far as interface performance you might also want to consider Firewire (or IEEE 1394) which is 800Mbps. Now USB2 has a theoretical throughput of 480Mbps but in real world use there is a lot of overhead which makes even Firewire 400 faster. I'll paste an article URL at the end here where tests were made but the end results was that FW800 was 30-50% faster than USB2. The second article claims that USB2 drives max out at around 40MB/s while firewire can hit about 90MB/s. Where this starts to get messy is with thunderbolt and USB3 because you start to hit the limit of what the hard drives can do. So USB3 supposedly can hit 150MB/s but only the top 5 of 46 avaialble hard drives tested by tomshardware (3rd link) can even read that fast, not to mention write (which is usually slower). So for Thunderbolt, which has a throughput of 1000MB/s per channel and up to 20 channels, it just doesn't matter because no single drive could fill that pipe, assuming your computer could even keep up. So Thunderbolt usually is going to employ the fastest hard drives and often times multiple drives to give the greatest throughput for, say, HD video editing or gene sequencing. For everybody else a firewire or USB3 drive should be plenty fast. One other nice thing with Firewire is it also supplies a good bit of power (about 45 watts) so there are firewire drives out there which require no other power source. USB is limited to about 5 watts of power which is good enough for keybaords and such but not enough to spin up a hard drive. Hope this helps. http://www.pcworld.com/article/185415/article.html http://www.everythingusb.com/comparison.html http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/hdd-charts-2012/-01-Read-Throughput-Average-h2benchw-3.16,2901.html CB On 4/14/13 10:52 PM, Ricardo Walker wrote: > Hi, > > I was thinking the same thing. Keep in mind, these speeds are theoretical. > I'm pretty sure you won't come close to seeing them in real life. And > honestly, I'm not certain those speeds are even worth that kind of money > unless your job really depends on it or, you just have a lot of disposable > cash around. > > hth > > Ricardo Walker > [email protected] > Twitter:@apple2thecore > www.appletothecore.info > > On Apr 14, 2013, at 8:28 PM, John Panarese <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Yes, it's far faster than USB. I think 2x 10 GB a second bidirectional, >> though I don't know if that holds out in real world use. >> >> Take Care >> >> John D. Panarese >> Director >> Mac for the Blind >> Tel, (631) 724-4479 >> Email, [email protected] >> Website, http://www.macfortheblind.com >> >> APPLE CERTIFIED SUPPORT PROFESSIONAL FOR MAC OSX LION >> >> AUTHORIZED APPLE STORE BUSINESS AFFILIATE >> >> MAC and iOS VOICEOVER TRAINING AND SUPPORT >> >> >> >> On Apr 14, 2013, at 7:30 PM, "Jesus Garcia" <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> Yes certainly they tend to be more costly, though from what I have >>> seen lately the difference seems to have narrowed, my biggest reason >>> is the write read speed of thunder bolt if correct as to the >>> advertised speed seems to be considerably better then even USB 3.00. >>> Regardless thanks for taking your time to answer my question. >>> Jesus Garcia >>> >>> -----Original Message----- >>> From: [email protected] >>> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of John Panarese >>> Sent: Sunday, April 14, 2013 19:08 >>> To: [email protected] >>> Subject: Re: External Hard Drive question >>> >>> There are some Thunderbolt drives out there, but they tend to be >>> a bit more expensive. If you take a look at Amazon or just do a >>> Google search for Thunderbolt external hard drives, you will get an >>> idea of their costs. They tend to be around twice or more the cost of USB >>> HDs. >>> >>> >>> Take Care >>> >>> John D. Panarese >>> Director >>> Mac for the Blind >>> Tel, (631) 724-4479 >>> Email, [email protected] >>> Website, http://www.macfortheblind.com >>> >>> APPLE CERTIFIED SUPPORT PROFESSIONAL FOR MAC OSX LION >>> >>> AUTHORIZED APPLE STORE BUSINESS AFFILIATE >>> >>> MAC and iOS VOICEOVER TRAINING AND SUPPORT >>> >>> >>> >>> On Apr 14, 2013, at 7:02 PM, "Jesus Garcia" <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>>> Okay thanks I thought that format issues may be the problem, but >>>> since the thumb drives and SD cards have no problem I thought >>>> perhaps the external hard drives behaved the same. I am considering >>>> purchasing a thunder bolt capable drive to use exclusively with the >>>> Mac any ideas as to which would be best? My mac book pro hard drive >>>> is 360 gig so I don't need more than a 500 Gig drive. >>>> >>>> -----Original Message----- >>>> From: [email protected] >>>> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of John Panarese >>>> Sent: Sunday, April 14, 2013 18:37 >>>> To: [email protected] >>>> Subject: Re: External Hard Drive question >>>> >>>> Was the drive formatted in Windows? If it is NTFS, it will only be >>>> read only on the Mac. You will need to buy a product like Paragon >>>> NTFS to enable the Mac to write to NTFS formatted drives. >>>> >>>> >>>> Take Care >>>> >>>> John D. Panarese >>>> Director >>>> Mac for the Blind >>>> Tel, (631) 724-4479 >>>> Email, [email protected] >>>> Website, http://www.macfortheblind.com >>>> >>>> APPLE CERTIFIED SUPPORT PROFESSIONAL FOR MAC OSX LION >>>> >>>> AUTHORIZED APPLE STORE BUSINESS AFFILIATE >>>> >>>> MAC and iOS VOICEOVER TRAINING AND SUPPORT >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> On Apr 14, 2013, at 5:43 PM, Jesus Garcia <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> >>>>> Evening list members, I have a puzzle I can create folders, and >>>>> copy files >>>> perfectly fine to a thumb drive, SD card, but when I try doing the >>>> same to an external hard drive I cannot do so. The drives both >>>> appear in the finder, and I can open the folder and file list view, >>>> but I cannot create a folder or copy from the Mac hard drive to the >>>> external. These external drives are USB drives and I would like to >>>> use them both on my Mac book pro and on my windows machine. What am I >>>> missing? >>>>> -- >>>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >>>>> Groups >>>> "MacVisionaries" group. >>>>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, >>>>> send an >>>> email to [email protected]. >>>>> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >>>>> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. >>>>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. >>>>> >>>>> >>>> -- >>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >>>> Groups "MacVisionaries" group. >>>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, >>>> send an email to [email protected]. >>>> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >>>> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. >>>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. >>>> >>>> >>>> -- >>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >>>> Groups >>> "MacVisionaries" group. >>>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, >>>> send an >>> email to [email protected]. >>>> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >>>> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. >>>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. >>>> >>>> >>> -- >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >>> Groups "MacVisionaries" group. >>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, >>> send an email to [email protected]. >>> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >>> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. >>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. >>> >>> >>> -- >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >>> "MacVisionaries" group. >>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >>> email to [email protected]. >>> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >>> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. >>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. >>> >>> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "MacVisionaries" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected]. >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. >> >> -- ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
