A Tale Of Two Thunderbolt Storage Devices: Seagate's GoFlex Desk and Western Digital's Thunderbolt Duo
by Brian Dipert on May 13, 2012 7:52 PM EST- Posted in
- Thunderbolt
- Seagate
- WD
- Western Digital
The GoFlex Desk is a versatile-interface storage product that should already be familiar to long-time AnandTech readers. Anand reviewed the 3 TByte version in August 2010, following up with a 4 TByte product review last September. PC-targeted variants ship pre-formatted for NTFS and optionally come in drive-only (i.e. dock-less, therefore interface-less) models, along with versions including both USB 2 and USB 3 docks. Available accessories include dock adapters for both USB 3.0 and for the combo of FireWire 800 and USB 2.0.
The particular GoFlex Desk model I used in this review, however, is the 2 TByte version of the GoFlex Desk for Mac. It differs from its PC brethren in three main areas:
- A mixed black-and-silver color motif, more attractive IMHO than the all-silver prototype Anand saw at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show
- HFS+ formatting out-of-box, and
- A bundled USB 2.0-plus-FireWire 800 dock, matching the external interface allotment available in Macs over the past several years
Other items bundled with the GoFlex Desk for Mac include USB 2 and FireWire 800 cables (a nice touch), a Quick Start guide, and a 12V/3A AC-to-DC power adapter. My particular unit contains the Seagate (no surprise) ST2000DL003, a 2 TByte 5900 RPM Barracuda Green HDD with 64 MByte cache and 6 Gbps SATA interface. Since the enclosure is fanless, the Barracuda Green design decision is perhaps understandable.
More recently, Seagate has made available a Thunderbolt Adapter for the GoFlex Desk line, containing dual Thunderbolt ports and which Anand previewed at January's CES:
At $189.99 MSRP, the Thunderbolt Adapter is certainly not cheap, nor does it include a Thunderbolt cable. Seagate's USB 3.0 adapter's MSRP, by comparison, is $79.99 and includes not only the dock but also a PCI Express add-in card. But the pricing is at least somewhat understandable given Thunderbolt's currently scant market footprint; right now the interface is mostly only in Macs, as previously noted, and specifically only in the following models:
- iMacs since May 3, 2011
- Mac minis since July 20, 2011
- MacBook Pros since February 24, 2011, and
- MacBook Airs since July 20, 2011
In lieu of high volume, Seagate needs to charge higher-than-usual prices on its Thunderbolt-based products in order to ensure sufficient revenue and profit return-on-investment. Unknown, too, is the bill-of-materials cost, specifically of the Intel-sourced Thunderbolt controller. Interestingly, the AC-to-DC power unit bundled with the Thunderbolt Adapter is also 12V but is only specified to output 1.5A, half that of the "wall wart" included with the USB 2/FireWire 800 dock. Perhaps the latter power unit is over-specified for the need; perhaps, alternatively, the HDD is getting a portion of its power allocation supplied directly over the Thunderbolt link from the connected computer system.
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Grizzlebee - Sunday, May 13, 2012 - link
"Not surprisingly, the RAID 0 striped results were roughly 2x faster than those either accessing a single drive at a time (JBOD and concatenated) or both drives simultaneously but in a mirrored fashion (RAID 1). "Judging from the table data, you meant to say 1x faster or twice as fast. Great review though.
bdipert - Sunday, May 13, 2012 - link
Good point, Grizzlebee, I'll tweak the text. Thanks for the kudos!Articuno - Sunday, May 13, 2012 - link
USB has over two decades of backwards compatibility, has no patents controlling it, the royalties are optional and it's fast enough for 90% of tasks it's used for today. Thunderbolt may be faster, but it costs more in every aspect, has EXTREMELY low adoption rate across the board and still can't manage the "one cable for everything" idea Apple originally helped create it for because it uses copper wiring instead of fiber optics.repoman27 - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
The high cost of Thunderbolt devices compared to mainstream consumer gear has nothing to do with patents or royalties. It's actually insanely cheap compared to any other 20 or more Gbps, full-duplex over a single cable technology. There are plenty of people out there for whom having this type of technology is a serious aid to their workflow.Point to another first generation I/O technology that had a higher adoption rate in its first 12 months.
Apple never espoused a "one cable for everything" idea, as is clearly evidenced by the fact that the Thunderbolt ports they added to the 2011 Macs are right next to... well, a bunch of other ports, including USB.
How exactly would Thunderbolt be better if it used fiber optics? For the short cable runs most users typically require, copper is still king. You can use a fiber optic cable with current Thunderbolt controllers if you like, it'll just cost more.
If the performance gain you get from a Thunderbolt enabled workflow isn't worth the couple hundred dollars extra that it would cost you, then don't shell out for it. But at least recognize that for some people, it's well worth it.
Just because you don't use something yourself, does not make it a failure. I've never personally needed to drive a semi-trailer truck, but I'm sure glad others do every day, and I would hardly categorize the entire class of vehicles as a failure. You may not realize how ubiquitous 1394 is, but rest assured, it continues to be quite useful to many folks out there.
philipma1957 - Sunday, May 13, 2012 - link
If you own a mac you have 3 options.1) seagate thunderbolt 2.5 inch adapter apple cable and a 256gb ssd if sata 3 any larger has stability problems. I use a mushkin 240gb and a crucial m4 256gb fast stable use as os drive with mac minis. cost if you got the deal with the crucials at 199 the cost is 350 for a stable external boot drive.
2) next a lacie little big disk pull the 500gb drives and put in a pair of samsung series 810 ssds 256gb. in fact I am typing on that setup right now. cost 400 for the little big disk 50 cable and 600 for the ssds. 1050 and I sold the spare 500gb hdds. for 150 net is 900. pull the insane fan sounds like a effing mosquito on steroids. this was 900.
now you could build this for less if you got the 256gb crucials at 200. this would be 850. this is an outstanding os drive. rock steady in raid0
3) last buy the pegasus r6 use the software to run 2 raid0 setups. one with a raid0 for lion one with a raid0 for boot camp the other 2 drives are backup use it with a mac mini server or an imac cost is 1500 plus the ssds 4 of the crucials would have been 2300.
these units tested today are pretty much not getting what t-bolt is good for external ssd boot drive along with a raid0 for storage. they all run hot and they may not be stable. (time will tell) any of the setups I mention work and work well. they have ended the iMac my internal drive is trapped problem. Now usb3 would be almost as good for the 3 above it would only lag a lot to the pegasus.
StormyParis - Sunday, May 13, 2012 - link
Can we please have the CPU load info? I remember my PC becoming so jerky as to be unusable during heavy USB2 I/O in the early days.bdipert - Sunday, May 13, 2012 - link
Hi StormyParis, I mention CPU load to some degree on the 'Software RAID' page, related to the Thunderbolt Duo. Suffice it to say that in RAID 0 mode, the incremental CPU load specifically due to software RAID was miniscule (a few percentage points of one of the four 'cores'...two physical cores, further doubled to 'four' courtesy of HyperThreading support in the CPU), and in non-RAID modes for both the Seagate and WD drives, it was imperceptible for Thunderbolt alone.isulzer - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
Its a permissions issue.The app cannot write to the root directory, so it fails.
Easiest way to get around this (if insecure) is to grant all users write access to the drive.
bdipert - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
Thanks for the feedback, isulzer, but the MacBook Pro SSD (which I was able to successfully run AJA on) is also that particular system's boot drive. Is the particular O/S part of the reason for the issue? The MBP runs Snow Leopard, the Mac mini runs Lionisulzer - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
In lion and mountain lion, permissions on the boot drive are slightly different. Only System has write access. Everyone else has read only. So if you try to write a file to \ in Lion, you will have to authenticate.