I have an older HDD RAID set up with Thunderbolt 2. How does the speed of that compare to a new Lacie USB-C drive using HDD? Which is better for FCP video editing? My current iMac does not have Thunderbolt 3, but when I upgrade, will I even want to use the older RAID drive or the USB C drive?
Raid 0 will be your faster option of the two.
The limiting factor is the spinning drive/s rather than the port.
Here are some of my real world speeds from my stuff.
Raid 0 configured drive with two 7200 rpm drives over Thunderbolt 2:
One Solid State Drive over Thunderbolt 2:
This highlights the fact that the ports are less involved in the read/write speed than the type of drives.
The type of drive will make a huge difference.
Raid 0 with 7200rpm drives will cover a lot of media.
Nowadays 4K vid and higher require more space and more speed AND more expense.
If your current drives do what you require then they are fast enough if not then SSD drives is your best bet to improve performance.
BTW: The older drives are still good for backups and storage space, so they are not redundant just older school tech.
Al
Raid 0 will be your faster option of the two.
The limiting factor is the spinning drive/s rather than the port.
Here are some of my real world speeds from my stuff.
Raid 0 configured drive with two 7200 rpm drives over Thunderbolt 2:
One Solid State Drive over Thunderbolt 2:
This highlights the fact that the ports are less involved in the read/write speed than the type of drives.
The type of drive will make a huge difference.
Raid 0 with 7200rpm drives will cover a lot of media.
Nowadays 4K vid and higher require more space and more speed AND more expense.
If your current drives do what you require then they are fast enough if not then SSD drives is your best bet to improve performance.
BTW: The older drives are still good for backups and storage space, so they are not redundant just older school tech.
Al
Depends on the Raid configuration.
Raid 0 may be a faster option.
The limiting factor is 7200 rpm spinning drives.
Download an app like Black Magic’s Speed test to compare the two in the current configuration.
Al
It's RAID 0, for the fastest RAID speed. They are 7200 rpm drives. I can't use Black Magic because, as I say, my iMac does not have USB-C, so this is just so I know for future, when I upgrade. There must be a standard answer for this, but I can't seem to find it online.
Thanks for going to the trouble of doing that comparison, but in my case, I am not comparing to SSD, which I know is much faster. It's clear that a RAID is not the way to go if you have a single SSD. I guess what you are saying is that even Thunderbolt 2 is faster than the drive, so it's not the port speed. That brings me back to the original question. You show just under 350 read and write speed for RAID on T2. The USB-C drive says it will do 240 on USB-C, so not as fast as an older RAID HDD on T2. That's what I wanted to know. Thanks so much for your help.
Yup.
If you have a drive that spins at 7200, in today's world it means slowish.
If the ports go fast the 7200 drives cannot keep up.
BTW: USB-C can be confusing due to the shape of the connector.
This is a good article:
Al
Can you provide some specs on the drives please?
Without info we would only be guessing.
Al
There does not seem to be any specs with your response.
Oops, sorry, I now see the links.
Al
RAID HDD compared to USB-C HDD
