Not surprisingly, then, we see identical performance from our Vertex 3 in Seagate's GoFlex Thunderbolt adapter and MSI's Z77A-GD80. While we keep our BIOS, drivers, and SSD firmware up-to-date, sequential numbers rarely change. Sequential performance isn't as sensitive to those optimizations, which is something we also see in our SSD reviews. Creating a product for a broader range of applications, like the GoFlex, means less of the tuning you'd find on a piece of hardware tweaked for a certain motherboard model. But the GoFlex Thunderbolt adapter only delivers 120 MB/s, whereas we can achieve 160 MB/s with a direct connection to motherboard's ASM1061.Īccording to ASMedia, the performance of its ASM1061 depends on vendor-specific BIOS optimization. Theoretically, random performance should be nearly identical from both devices. Seagate's GoFlex Thunderbolt adapter, for example, uses ASMedia's ASM1061 SATA controller, which coincidentally is also on-board our MSI Z77A-GD80. Non-RAID Thunderbolt drives employing third-party SATA controllers underperform native SATA connections, though, in this case. This is very similar to the topology motherboard vendors used to add SATA 6Gb/s support to their platforms before it was integrated into chipsets, employing third-party Marvell and ASMedia controllers attached to the core logic through one PCIe link. Inside them, you'll likely find a PCIe-to-SATA controller. Non-RAID Thunderbolt devices are also an exception.
In fact you can more easily improve the specs of the SSD drive that way. The LaCie is $349 including the TB and USB3 cables. This is a cheaper and more compact external 256GB option than the GoFlex STAE122 + SSD + cable combo (~$420).
I just rubber banded the drive to the back of my iMac after removing the orange bumper. While not as fast as a best in class internal 6GB SATA3 SSD, it's certainly an easy way to move to an SSD environment. I also enabled TRIM using Trim Enabler and a re-boot.īlackmagic 1GB: W 250 MB/s R 378 MB/s (HDD ~90 and 95)īoot Time to Login: 19.4s (was 90.1s with HDD) I'll report back periodically with updates. I use SuperDuper to mirror the SSD to the old HD boot partition once a week (in addition to TM and my other backups.). I cannot tell any real difference from an internal SSD. In short, it works perfectly so far, and no surgery required (edit 13 months - rock solid through may sleep cycles.). Just an FYI regarding booting my mid-2011 27" i7 from the new 256GB LaCie Rugged Thunderbolt SSD.
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