Thunderbolt External HD vs SSD

[johnfkitchen]

If a 300GB drive will satisfy your storage needs, a lower cost way of getting velociraptor performance is to use a 7,200 RPM 3TB drive, and defining a 300 GB partition on the outer cylinders.

Yes, it spins slower, so has higher rotational latency, but that is made up for by awesomely fast seek times. The head is only moving over 7 or 8 percent of the surface. Also, the data transfer rate on those outer cylinders is consistently fast.

And you have a free archival partition of 2.7 terabytes!

 

[jeremiaha]

Basically a traditional HDD is never going to take advantage of Sata 3, USB 3 or TB.

I think the first drive coming onto the markert is this

http://www.lacie.com/us/technologies/technology.htm?id=10039

Now here is the catch, which people do not realise, its needs SSD drives to take advantage of the speeds. The Lacie, drive uses SSD in Raid 0.... this thing is going to be so expansive!

So if you want an TB solution in the future, to take advantage of the speed, be prepared to pay heaps for it.

Also consider what the bottleneck is in your system. Having a HDD drive inside your iMac, and then copying files on a TB with SSD.... is going to be bottlenecked by the HDD. Sata 3 and everything above it is great, if your willking to spend big $$ on compatible devices and remove bottlenecks.

TB is a great concept, if we can make HDD die and SSD continue to go faster and get cheaper.

Will external Thunderbolt bays with SSD be bootable? This would make all the difference if you could have your boot drive via thunderbolt.