external drive

I am in the market for a new external drive to use with my MBP and FCP. I have been using a WD USB 3.0 but I want to upgrade to TB. What is a good one. I want at least 2TB but I prefer 4TB. I looked at a WD 4TB portable that has the integrated cable and you can use it as RAID or straight for $349 on Amazon. The downside to it is yes the cable is integrated so if the cable goes bad the drive is bad. Also from what I have read, there is a fan inside the unit and it is somewhat loud.

I would look at what Other World Computing has to offer in drives and TB.

Dave

I may choose Seagate or HGST at 4TB level

kclark
Looks like you are talking about a single hdd in an external enclosure. You will not gain any speed by switching from USB3 to Thunderbolt. A single drive will not saturate a USB3 I/O port. Even a single ssd drive that is 4X faster than hdd will not saturate a USB3 bus. Save your money.
Only by using a multi-drive RAID 0 will you ever saturate a USB3 bus.

If your hdd is a 5400rpm drive, then switching to a 7200rpm drive will gain you some speed.

You should calculate the maximum amount of data bandwidth you need and configure your system to that.

Here is an article by Larry Jordan that explains relative through-puts for different drives/i/O buses...
www.larryjordan.biz/app_bin/wordpress/archives/2559

Hope this helps, Greg