External HDD connections for the future

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I know there's a stick but it seems to have gone on for years and also is more about brands. I'm more interested in connections and where the future lies. Hope this makes sense.

I have 2 iMacs, a mini, and a MBP. They all have firewire and USB 2 but only the mac min has USB 3. They all have Thunderbolt apart from the oldest iMac.

I also have a variety of HDDs purchased over the years. I need a lot of storage - I'm a photographer using large RAW files - and I also run all my music files in AIFF on HDDs.

Anyway, I am reluctant to invest more money in HDDs with Firewire which looks like it will die out in the next few years. I can't really see many affordable drives with Thunderbolt and I'm wondering how this will fare in the future. Seems to be a very very slow uptake.

I could stick with USB3 and just suffer the slower USB 2 speeds when I'm using drives connected to all my computers apart from the mini which has USB 3 ports but this would be a pain.

So I'm stuck any advice or is there some way of using the drives and some sort of converter so that they will at least work with all my computers?

Thanks for any advice you might have
 

chscag

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I would stick with USB even though using USB 2 is definitely slower. And if you have external hard drives that support USB 3, at least you can use them with your Mini. Also take note that the newer iMacs, MacBook Air, and probably the upcoming MacBook Pro all have USB 3.0.

Firewire is almost dead and even Apple has abandoned it on their machines. Thunderbolt would be the way to go if it wasn't so expensive to deploy. And it's future is still up in the air. MacWorld Magazine this month (August) has an interesting article regarding Thunderbolt and the fact that the new Mac Pro will have the newer Thunderbolt 2.
 

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