[citation][nom]bramathon[/nom]So wikipedia tells me that usb 3.0 is capable of ~600 MB/s. DOes thunderbolt offer any advantage over a usb2.0 drive?[/citation]
yes.
usb 2.0 should be able to do 60mbps but is usually capped around the 20mbps range because its more for input devices apposed to storage. this is why firewire for a long time was preferred over usb, but usb had such a dominating install base, and apple being apple wont let people say firewire outside of mac...
thunderbolt is designed i believe ground up for storage solutions.
[citation][nom]caedenv[/nom]Even slow drives move at 120MB/s these days, and with SSD and RAID available we need something faster than 1000/t ethernet, and USB3 which is already too slow for many applications (just like USB2 was when it came out). Besides, as I understand it, thunderbolt is a daisy-chain style interface (like firewire use to be back in the day), which means that all devices share a common pool of bandwidth. The cool thing about thunderbolt is that it (supposedly) can run multiple simultaneous protocols over the same wire. Meaning you can daisy chain your monitor, external HDDs, network to another PC/mac, or even use adapters to plug in USB, or firewire devices in, and each device will speak in it's original language of SATA, HDMI, etc. The idea is that it would be the 'last' and single interconnect for every device from your monitor to your cell phone. If you had that many devices connected all at once it would quickly become understandable that you need massive amounts of bandwidth.Practically speaking it does monitors, HDDs, and some audio protocols (though you would need a thunderbolt amp/receiver/decoder to make that useful, and I dont think they are out yet), with others to come in later revisions. It was also supposed to be over fiber optic cable (thus the name Lightpeak originally), but that was thrown under the bus with all the other disappointments we have had with the interface so far. Still a good idea, just far short of what we were promised.[/citation]
a hdd boot drive, depending on ho fragmented it is, runs around 60mbps, thats what mine clocked at before i moved to an ssd. [citation][nom]back_by_demand[/nom]Even a top end raided SSD would only need eSATA or USB3, there is no need for this to be used on an external drive until read speeds get even slightly closer.[/citation]
we already have ssds that hit the 1gb read write mark and need pcie slot to support them. thunderbolt will give them more head room for cheaper solutions.
plus i would rather have to much speed and let some go to waste than plug things into ports that are just good enough.
[citation][nom]51l3n5t[/nom]smell like troll[/citation]
could be, but im assuming a hdd boot, and writing usb 2 as a mistake.
[citation][nom]dragonsqrrl[/nom]"Current hard drive technology will be the bottleneck in Thunderbolt's performance, as a demonstration shown at Macworld revealed a 6 TB Thunderbolt Duo to only have peak transfer speeds of 2 Gbps (250 MBps). Still, that's faster than USB 3.0 even in its present state, and allows users to shuttle a full HD movie back and forth in thirty seconds each way."The last I checked, 250 MBps is well within the capabilities of USB 3.0 specs.[/citation]
specs dont mean they will run that fast, just it should run that fast.
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that said, what is the read write speed of a 4tb hdd?
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