<\/a>I connected the enclosure to a mid 2013 15″ retina Macbook Pro running OS X 10.9,2 Mavericks, and benchmarked the disk speed using the BlackMagic drive speed test. The software reported a disk read speed of approximately 379MB per second, and a write speed of approximately 269MB per second. By contrast, running the same test on the built in 256GB PCIe SSD in the Macbook Pro produced more fluctuating results, with disk read speeds generally around the 329MB per second mark and write speeds somewhere around 278MB per second. These minor fluctuations were likely due to the operating system using the drive for other background tasks during the speed test. Regardless, the results indicate the StarTech enclosure is capable of giving performance very similar to what one could expect from a fast internal drive.<\/p>\nOverall, I can safely recommend the StarTech as a viable option for external Thunderbolt drive storage. The unit was successfully detected and the drives properly mounted whether I had it attached before powering up the computer or plugged in the Thunderbolt cable after OS X was up and running. I do have some concern that the tiny cooling fan on the rear of the unit might eventually fail, but that’s simply based on previous experience with similarly small fans in other enclosures. StarTech promises a full two year warranty; beyond that time-frame, one could likely source a nearly identical replacement fan and replace it inexpensively. Otherwise, there were no real issues with the unit during testing. Users in need of very large amounts of external disk storage might be better served with a product supporting 3.5 inch desktop SATA drives, but the StarTech makes a lot of sense if you want the fast performance of SSDs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As many Apple Mac users will attest, the selection of Thunderbolt compatible peripherals on the market is still rather limited. StarTech launches its first attempt at offering a Thunderbolt device with the S252SMTB3, a two bay external drive enclosure. Retailing at $326.99, the device supports up to two 2.5 inch HDDs or SSDs with capacities […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":21061,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1085],"tags":[5076,1387,358,355,865,5077,579],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21002"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21002"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21073,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21002\/revisions\/21073"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}