Buffalo MiniStation Thunderbolt Review - An External with USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt

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• Guspaz - Wednesday, August 1, 2012 - link

  This is still a $100-130 premium over comparable USB 3 drives of the same capacity, which is just nuts. It's the same kind of markup Seagate charges (the thunderbolt goflex adapter goes for about $130).
  
  This is silly: Apple has a thunderbolt ethernet adapter out for $29, which means the cost of the controller is below $29, and you can buy a card with a PCIe SATA controller for $15. Both of those would already have markup on them for the profit margin, so the premium for a thunderbolt external HDD should be LOWER than $44... Instead the premium is almost three times higher.

• PRPechek - Wednesday, August 1, 2012 - link

  I would have to disagree with you. The Thunderbolt Ethernet Adapter does not have a Thunderbolt controller. At this link:
  
  http://www.hardmac.com/news/2012/06/21/inside-appl...
  
  You can see a tear down of the TBEA and Apple is not using Intel’s Thunderbolt-to-PCIe chipset. Instead, the Broadcom chip is directly connected to the Thunderbolt cable and it is just working as a cable transport layer. By design, the Thunderbolt "controller" is actually mapping one or more PCI-Express lanes directly over the cable, so that the MAC+PHY solution itself only needs speak PCI-Express and only requires the Thunderbolt PHY.
  
  Note: that I cut and pasted almost all of the above from Stephen Foskett great breakdown of the TBEA chipset. http://blog.fosketts.net/2012/07/03/apple-thunderb...
  
  But as you can see on the second page of this review Buffalo has a quite a few chipsets imbeded into the PCB to make a workable dual port solution and that raises that raises the BOM costs. Seagate's solution has a similar situation with their solution.
  
  (Full disclosure: I work for Buffalo Technology)

• Olaf van der Spek - Wednesday, August 1, 2012 - link

  So why can't you do a TB - SATA bridge without TB controller as well?
  
  What's the advantage of TB over USB3 if you merely want to connect a single HDD?

• ggathagan - Wednesday, August 1, 2012 - link

  Your first question is not clear.
  TB requires a TB controller on both ends of the cable, so the TB controller is going to be there no matter what.
  
  Intel is the only company that makes TB controllers, so how would you create a TB-SATA bridge without the controller?
  
  There's no advantage to TB over USB3, unless you have a MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mac mini, or iMac that has no USB 3 support.

• name99 - Wednesday, August 1, 2012 - link

  "There's no advantage to TB over USB3"
  
  It appears that there is a substantial speed advantage --- almost 2x.
  Look at the numbers: 200MB/s or so for sequential USB3, 370 MB/s or so for sequential TB.
  
  This may or may not be worth $130 to you, but let's not pretend that the two are identical.

• Lonyo - Thursday, August 2, 2012 - link

  You must be missing the part where that only applies to an SSD put in after the fact.
  With the stock drive which comes as part of the unit, the speeds are equal at around 115~120MB/s.
  There is no performance difference between this drive when used with Thunderbolt, and when used with USB3.
  
  And if you're getting an SSD to put in an enclosure, the difference becomes the difference between an empty USB3 enclosure, and one of these, which means it's more like $170+, since you can get an empty USB3 eternal enclosure for around $30, while you can't get just a Thunderbolt enclosure, so you have to pay $200 for the 500GB drive.
  
  As shipped, with a mechanical harddrive in it, this drive is identical in performance to a USB3 external enclosure with no Thunderbolt. And $110+ more expensive.

• lin2log - Thursday, August 2, 2012 - link

  And you must be missing (actually ignoring) the very simple original question: "What's the advantage of TB over USB3", which I don't see somehow applies to any one disk or peripheral, but rather is about the port ITSELF, so your insertion is completely irrelevant.
  
  But I like how the question is quickly limited to "if you merely want to connect a single HDD", which makes it a nonsensically loaded question.
  
  Simple: if you don't see the advantages for you... DON'T USE IT. Duuuuh...

• ssj3gohan - Thursday, August 2, 2012 - link

  You seem to imply that his comments are not valid, but that is not true at all. He has extremely valid points. What use is a proprietary interface with monstrously expensive interconnects, controllers, almost no second suppliers and no performance, power consumption, ANY advantage whatsoever? You're just paying a hell of a lot more for nothing. It's a big design flaw on Apple's side that there is apparently no USB 3 on some of their products, because that interface is obviously far superior except for some niche applications. They can promote the niche applications, sure, just make sure you can also plug in more conventional stuff. That's what expandability is all about.

• mavere - Thursday, August 2, 2012 - link

  "What use is a proprietary interface with ... almost no second suppliers and no performance, power consumption, ANY advantage whatsoever?"
  
  Patently false. As you have the benefit currently reading a TB review, you may scroll up and look at the SSD numbers.
  
  Cheers.

• AnnonymousCoward - Thursday, August 2, 2012 - link

  ssj3gohan is 1000% correct.