Need advice for ext. drive for new Mac Pro

Recently I asked about configuration of the new Mac Pro and got excellent advices. So now my order is now in USA. Now I need advice about external drive for my FCPX. Media. Is it thunderbolt drive or USB 3. 2-3 TB would be enough.I have the privilege to be in no hurry, so nanoseconds do not matter. I am not professional under time pressure. I will be thankful for any suggestions.

Makki

To future proof your hardware choice and if you have the money, I would definitely go for the Promise Pegasus 2 (Thunderbolt 2) R4 8TB at $1,454 + shipping [ amzn.com/B00GXO0QHY ]. Which has a usuable storage space of 6TB. The drives can be upgraded to 12-16TB in the future.

If you're on a budget, I would go for a Seagate Thunderbolt Dock at $150 [ amzn.com/B009HQCAPQ ] and you can use any hard drive. The dock gets ~220 Mb/s read/write speeds. It's what I used for a year before upgrading to Promise Pegasus R6 12TB Thunderbolt 1 RAID5 at ~550 Mb/s read/write speeds perfect long form edits.

It depends on what your priorities are and what the future holds for expansion on the Mac Pro. If you're not under time pressure, the Seagate TB dock is great for the money...I'm sure newer tech will be out next year.

What configuration have you decided for the Mac Pro and what type of work will you be doing on it?

Hope this helps.

Thank you so much, very interesting. I chose the base model, same GPU, 16 GB RAm and 560 internal. The reseller here in Iceland did not want any overkill according to my needs.

I'll say I'm running the Promise Pegasus R6 and love it. I bought the first gen model with 6TB. Its about the same price as the Pegasus 2 R4. I would also recomend the R4 for editing with your Mac Pro.

Delivered to Iceland the cost is huge. Thank you for this recommendation, I will certainly check this out.

I have checked out you recommendations. None are available in Iceland. Pegasus is to expensive but would great solution. I have question about two other options. First La Cie thunderbolt hub for two SATA disks store.apple.com/us/product/H8875ZM/A/lac...b-thunderbolt-series

Or simply buy a cheap USB 3 disk.
I will appreciate you idea about that. I am not a professional, but I have ordered Mac Pro.

Regards
Makki

I'm running a Pegasus2 Diskless 4 Bay, with 4TB drives in it, on a current model 15" rMBP, and it is phenomenal using BMPCC ProRes HQ files and REDCODE RAW native files. I populated it with drives from OWC, and have 12 TB of usable storage, for less than what 6TB of a factory populated Pegasus2 would have cost me.

But if you're not doing 2K or 4K work, if you're just doing HD, a USB 3 should give you really good performance. I have an OWC USB 3 RAID also, and it is very impressive, besides the noise it makes.

Thank you Ben, the noise scares me. Rather something more expensive I instead of noise. The Pegasus would be ideal but I am reaching the price limit with buying Mac Pro. But have an opinion about the La Cie ?

When I'm working on HD i edit from a USB 3 Hitachi and toshiba ext drive, both 3TB. Both handle HD at best quality fine. And both are quiet, in fact, i only hear them, just, when they load up the libraries. In normal use they are virtually silent. I don't think they are up to 4k though.

Thank you for this information. Maybe it would be wise to start with USB 3 even with new Mac Pro.