UPDATE: Writing >2GB files on SSDs >240GB with the Seagate GoFlex Thunderbolt Adaptor can cause the drive to unexpectedly dismount from your computer with an error (-50). Read the full story and the solution by Wolfgang Bauer.
Following on from my USB3 testing, I’ve finally received an interesting box – the Seagate GoFlex Thunderbolt Adaptor, now in stock for about £100.
The cool trick is that you can connect any ‘bare’ Solid State Drive (SSD) to it, and the price of SSDs is coming down quickly. A 256GB SSD can be had for under £140. Of course then you have to add your £40 cable, but assuming we can use one adaptor and cable for all your SSDs, finally we have a solution for Thunderbolt SSD for editing (and archiving/Backing up to USB3).
The downside is that you’ll probably want to keep the bare drive in the adaptor with some elastic bands or something – very high tech.
So, why would you want to do this?
Because it’s freaking fast. That’s why. Editing with Final Cut Pro 10 on this drive is the sort of experience we assumed it would be. No spinny beachballs of death, no stuttering, just ‘slick demo’ performance.
| Drive | Write (MB/s) | Read (MB/s) |
| Slow, cheap USB2 drive | 21.6 | 26.2 |
| Western Digital Passport SE (USB2) | 30.1 | 32.8 |
| LaCie Quadra 7200rpm 2TB on FW800 | 46.6 | 44.5 |
| Crucial 256GB SSD on FW800 | 75 | 81.6 |
| Western Digital Passport SE (USB3) | 96.3 | 108.4 |
| Internal 512 GB SSD in MacBook Pro 17” | 88.8 | 167.0 |
| ThunderBolt with SSD | 266.3 | 381.3 |
We’re talking 5x the speed of FW800 write, 8x the speed of FW800 read. And then there’s file access times.
With the same cable and adaptor, you can purchase additional SSDs for £140, and pretty soon we’ll see half a terabyte for under £200.
For my little industry niche, that means one SSD per edit for the duration of that edit, then archived off to hard drives so the SSD can be recycled, but happy to have maybe even a dozen of them – which I couldn’t afford with the current clutch of Thunderbolt/SSD combinations.
As I edit on site a lot, this can mean little gotchas like power suddenly dipping or going off entirely. Not talking third world style, just leaving a render in your hotel room and Housekeeping thoughtfully remove your room key that you taped into the slot to keep the power on. Or that moment after a big event where you’re backing up, and the 3-phase power you’ve been living on gets pulled for the de-rig. Which is why I’m so passionate about bus-powered drives that can work with a laptop editing computer.
And then there’s the scary ‘let’s edit this in the car’ or ‘let’s log rushes on the plane’ – with spinning disks? No. Ah – how about SSD? Fine. I’ll be archiving ‘media managed’ videos to thumb drives next.
It makes hard disks feel as old fashioned as tape.
Travelling Matt 