As the dawn of a new desktop computing era awaits on the arrival of the new Apple Mac Pro there is one glaring piece missing from the puzzle. Where do we store all of our data? The unreleased 2013 Mac Pro seems to have a limited amount of onboard storage and users will need to rely on fast external disk arrays to serve files in and out at lightning speeds. The last thing you want is a Formula 1 Car of a computer with a ’75 Pinto serving up the files.
I have looked high and low to find the fastest external storage devices to connect to your computer. Please note that the read and write speeds are estimates based on user reviews and manufacture specifications. Also note that prices were sourced from Amazon.com at the time this article was written.
Drobo 5D
- Read speed: 310 MB/s
- Write speed: 230 MB/s
- Capacity: 4-bay at 16 TB
- Ports: 2 x Thunderbolt and 1 x USB 3.0
- Data protection: BeyondRAID with single or dual-drive redundancy
- Other features: Onboard battery that protects your data mSATA SSD
- Approximate price: $700
Smart 4-Bay Thunderbolt RAID System by DataTale
- Read speed: 656 MB/s (RAID 0)
- Write speed: 656MB/s (RAID 0)
- Capacity: 4-bay at 12 TB
- Ports: 2 x Thunderbolt
- Data protection: JBOD, RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 10 and HyperDuo
- Other features: HyperDuo
- Approximate price: $600
G-RAID with Thunderbolt
- Read speed: 316 MB/s (RAID 0)
- Write speed: 309MB/s (RAID 0)
- Capacity: 2-bay at 8 TB (none-serviceable)
- Ports: 2 x Thunderbolt
- Data protection: RAID 0
- Other features: G-Technology
- Approximate price: $665
LaCie 5big
- Read speed: 785 MB/s (RAID 0)
- Write speed: 695 MB/s (RAID 0)
- Capacity: 5-bay at 20 TB
- Ports: 2 x Thunderbolt
- Data protection: JBOD, RAID 0 and RAID 1
- Other features: Advanced cooling
- Approximate price: $1100 10TB, $2100 20TB
Promise Pegasus R6
- Read speed: 504 MB/s (RAID 0), 504 MB/s (RAID 5)
- Write speed: 626 MB/s (RAID 0), 600 MB/s (RAID 5)
- Capacity: 6-bay at 24 TB
- Ports: 2 x Thunderbolt
- Data protection: RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 6 and RAID 10
- Other features: 4-bay version available
- Approximate price: $1600
ARC-8050
- Read speed: 480 MB/s (RAID 0 )
- Write speed: 580 MB/s (RAID 0)
- Capacity: 8-bay at 32 TB
- Ports: 2 x Thunderbolt
- Data protection: RAID level 0, 1, 1E, 3, 5, 6, 10, 30, 50, 60, Single Disk or JBOD
- Other features: Many
- Approximate price: $1500