From: Milton Aupperle <milton@outcastsoft.com>

Date: March 17, 2012 1:42:20 PM MDT

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] Re: Maaaars!

Hi Jim;

If your looking for high speed transfer and disk space, your MBP 17" should have an expansion slot. Buy a cheap E-Sata Express card (I bought one at FutureShop for ~ $30 CDN last year) and an E-SATA capable drive, you can run 100+ megabytes per second. So you could record directly to an external drive.

Last year I needed more storage so I bough a 3 terrabyte USB 3 GoFlex drive for $160 CDN. The neat thing is that has a remove able base so that you can buy different interface (i.e. FireWire 800, E-SATA, Ethernet etc.) bases for it and then use the drive. FutureShop has the E-Sata GoFlex drive interface for $18 CDN, so I'm thinking about buying one because Apple won't support USB 3.

Your could also go the SD Express card route too like this:

http://www.era-adapter.com/memory-adapter-expresscard-ssd-c-10_48.html

or this:

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820161410

If you go with Thunderbolt, you can expect pricing to start at $400 USD and up (the stupid 1 meter Thunderbolt cable alone costs $50 - I can buy a USB 2 or 3 1 terrabyte drive for almost the same price!).

Lastly  a SDD is a lot faster (by 2 to 3 times) than a HD.

Very lastly, not only does Apple not support USB3, but it also does not support xHCI controllers. So if you buy a generic USB 3 card, Apple will not even recognize it as a USB 2 card. I picked up a NEC USB 3 Express card last year for $40 and evne though I knew it had no USB 3 drivers, I did expect it to work as a USB 2 card. It's just an inert chunk of metal as far as Apple is concerned, but It works fine under Windows 7 on the Same MBP 17" Laptop and the GoFlex USB 3 drive.

HTH..

Milton Aupperle