How does Thunderbolt performance pile up against eSATA ? Macworld Lab ’s exam results show that Thunderbolt ’s allow for a sizeable hike over eSATA — it ’s not as spectacular as the advance over FireWire 800 , but still very impressive .
Macworld Lab recentlycompared Thunderbolt and FireWire 800 execution . In reply to that report , Macworldreaders want to see how Thunderbolt stop number stacks up against other user interface engineering — specifically , eSATA .
As with the Thunderbolt / FireWire 800 tests , we still have an egress of amount up with similar external gimmick . ThePromise Pegasus R6has six effort and only one type of connection : Thunderbolt . We do n’t have access to a six - Laurus nobilis array with eSATA , so for comparison , we used the Promise SmartStore DS4600 , but it has four drive alcove and FireWire 800 , USB 2.0 and eSATA ports . With both external arrays initialise as RAID 0 , we obtain the Thunderbolt carrying out to be almost four - and - a - half times quicker than eSATA in our AJA System Test read results , and about eight times faster than eSATA in our AJA System mental test write results .
All results are in megabytes per second (MBps). Higher results are better. Best result inbold.
With our 2 GB file tests , we copy a 2 GB file from the Mac ’s internal drive to the extraneous array , which test the write speed of the international array . Then we replicate the 2 GB data file back to the internal , which tests the external ’s read amphetamine . We repeat the psychometric test with a folder conatining 2 GB worth of files .
At first , these tests show dissimilar results compared to the AJA organisation Tests — the eSATA results were very similar to the Thunderbolt results , and FireWire 800 even put up comme il faut number . The problem was the obtuse inner drive in the MacBook Pro , so we pulled the SSD out of the 15 - inch MacBook Pro and instal it into the 17 - inch MacBook Pro . The chokepoint was removed , and we again saw large public presentation differences between the three interfaces .
When reading a 2 GB file , Thunderbolt was 39 percent faster than eSATA and doubly as fast as FireWire 800 . Writing that 2 GB Indian file , Thunderbolt was over two clock time faster than eSATA and 2.8 times faster than FireWire 800 . Reading a 2 GB folder , Thunderbolt was 30 per centum faster than eSATA and 73 percent quicker than FireWire 800 . Writing the folder , Thunderbolt was two times faster than eSATA and 2.4 times faster than FireWire 800 .
Benchmarks: Thunderbolt vs. eSATA
Promise Pegasus R6
All results are in megabyte per second ( MBps ) . Higher final result are better . Best result inbold .
[ James Galbraith is Macworld ’s research laboratory conductor . ]
