I ordered a Seagate t-bolt connector.

philipma1957 · Feb 18, 2012

well it works perfectly when daisy chained after the lacie little big disk. I thought I figured out the problem of the drop outs when I used it alone with the 512gb samsung.

This morning a few minutes ago it dropped out again running off bus power alone and using the samsung 512gb. Since I jury rigged it and the connection is rock solid I am forced to think that

A) bus power may not be enough for a big ssd like a 512gb type

B) the samsung I have is defective. Cost me 750 so I hope this is not true

C)it is fine the samsung is fine and they just don't like each other's controllers.

D) an unknown.

I can test this with a big 600gb intel series 320 if it is flawless that will rule out the power issue.

I can also test it with the 128gb crucial for a longer period of time.

I have a 256gb series 470/810 samsung.

My gut feeling is that this is power related. If true then the 600gb intel will not work well.

IT may mean that 256gb or 128gb ssds will be the limit for this device or that apple can patch the t-bolt port to have a bit more power.

fgullama · Feb 18, 2012

philipma1957 said:
well it works perfectly when daisy chained after the lacie little big disk. I thought I figured out the problem of the drop outs when I used it alone with the 512gb samsung.

This morning a few minutes ago it dropped out again running off bus power alone and using the samsung 512gb. Since I jury rigged it and the connection is rock solid I am forced to think that

A) bus power may not be enough for a big ssd like a 512gb type

B) the samsung I have is defective. Cost me 750 so I hope this is not true

C)it is fine the samsung is fine and they just don't like each other's controllers.

D) an unknown.

I can test this with a big 600gb intel series 320 if it is flawless that will rule out the power issue.

I can also test it with the 128gb crucial for a longer period of time.

I have a 256gb series 470/810 samsung.

My gut feeling is that this is power related. If true then the 600gb intel will not work well.

IT may mean that 256gb or 128gb ssds will be the limit for this device or that apple can patch the t-bolt port to have a bit more power.

Thanks again for the update. Being bootable is imperative for what I'm hoping to do. Fingers crossed...

A couple of somewhat related questions that perhaps in your testing you may be able to answer.

Does Mac OS see the thunderbolt drive as being internal, in that you can install boot camp to it? It won't allow me to install boot camp to my SSD via FireWire.

Also I the same vein, is the drive seen as a native serial ATA AHCI enabled drive so that TRIM can potentially be enabled (TRIM Enabler)? I'm not terribly worried about enabling TRIM on my Sandforce drive, but it would be nice to have the option. As it stands, I cannot even check the firmware version (from Win7 boot camp running on my internal drive) in my current setup, let alone update it

Thanks!

Frank

philipma1957 · Feb 18, 2012

this is a good set of questions. I had problems a while back trying to use boot camp with the minis. So I purchased vmware fusion I run my windows 7 as vm machines.

Shortcut3d can answer the trim question and the bootcamp question better then I can. I think he can do what you want with the lacie lbd and this looks like the lbd in the t-bolt system report.

if you look at the thumbnail you can see the intel(int the lacie) the samsung (in the seagate)

I know that shortcut3d talked about loading drivers for the AHCI CONTROLLER this allowed him to do more features.

Later on today I am going to put the intel on the seagate alone and see what happens.

My gut feeling is it will drop out with out the added power from the lacie daisy chain. I need to expain this a bit more when you use a lacie lbd alone it pulls 4 to 13 watts. when you add a daisychain to it the watts double . so I tested the lbd with out the seagate and just an intel inside the watts were 5. adding the seagate samsung the watts doubled to 10. this means that the lacies power supply is boosting the signal to the seagate . this is why the samsung does not drop out (i think)

if I am correct and you need to use 256gb hdds as a max for bus power it is not the end of the world. more testing will tell.

I also noticed that when I had the intel/lacie > samsung/seagate and was pulling 10 watts I used disk utility to unmount the samsung/seagate from the daisychain the watt meter spiked from 10 to 15 watts back to 10.

After the unmount I disconnected the samsung/seagate and ran the intel alone power use was 5 watts for the 1 ssd.

that spike of 5 plus watts to unmount the seagate/samsung is a lot of watts.

I am thinking that this is what causes the drop outs. I will need to see if any other ssd can spike the 5 watts. Well i will have a few days of tests to run.

A quick follow up I mount and unmounted the crucial m4 128gb sataIII drive the spike was 10 to 12 to 10 and when removing the crucial the watts drops to 5.

this seems to show the samsung 512gb has a problem with power spiking.

shortcut3d · Feb 18, 2012

Power issues are a real potential power with the Samsung 830. It uses more power than Sandforce 22xx controllers according to Anandtech.

OSX sees Thunderbolt as external, so bootcamp will not allow you to partition. You can get around this by partitioning your internal drive and the. Partitioning the Thunderbolt drive in Windows Installer. However, I have not been able to get past the first reboot in the Windows Install process. I even installed the Marvell controller drivers which use the SCSI pipe vs AHCI by clicking the driver link in the partition prompt. I also tried installing from an existing Windows 7 instance with no luck. I also tried using Norton Ghost with all the drivers installed. OSX boot loader sees the Norton created partition but Windows fails to boot.

Enabling AHCI in bootcamp allows you to flash the drive firmware, so Windows definitely thinks its internal. AHCI will also enable TRIM. An ATA/IDE or AHCI controller appears in Device Manager when you connect a Thunderbolt drive.

Similarly, OSX shows a controller in system profiler. The LaCie Thunderbolt Little Big Disk shows up unrecognized type, and get generic SATA II.

All these comments above are test on the LaCie Thunderbolt Little Big Disk, not on the Seagate GoFlex Thunderbolt 2.5" adapter. Once received I plan to run it through the same paces.

philipma1957 · Feb 18, 2012

yeah I am running the same test over with different ssds.

unmounting the 512gb samsung series 830 watts spiked from 10 to 15

unmounting the 128gb crucial m4 the watts spiked from 10 to 12

unmounting the 256gb samsung series 800 watts were flat 10 to 10.

this really is showing me that the 512gb series 830 samsung with the seagate are not a good match.

but the samsung series 800 256gb was good

the crucial m4 128gb was good .

I am going to slap in a samsung series 810/470.

fgullama · Feb 18, 2012

philipma1957 and shortcut3d, thanks again for the flow of information. As using an SSD with the Seagate GoFlex Thunderbolt is well into unsupported territory, it's really nice to get a handle on what potentially will and will not work. Even if the Seagate device only works with drives up to 256gb, I still think it will be a big win for those of us that want to inexpensively add an SSD to our iMac's/Mini's/etc. and don't feel comfortable tearing them apart.

Preliminarily, it sounds like good news for those of us with 256gb or smaller SSD's from a power standpoint and potentially TRIM.

Using boot camp on the external SSD drive would be nice, but not a show stopper for me. I find it kind of surprising though that boot camp does not allow this sort of external firewire/thunderbolt setup, as it was so easy to clone my internal drive to my temporary firewire SSD setup in regards to Lion. I was hoping there might be an easy workaround to this limitation, but the reality is for the amount of time I spend in Windows, the internal drive or VMWare Fusion on the SSD should be fine.

Looking forward to more info as you all find it. I'm jealous I'm not able to join the party... yet!

Frank

shortcut3d · Feb 20, 2012

@philipma - Have you sorted out the issues with the 512GB Samsung 830? I have one on order to swap out with a 500GB Seagate GoFlex Pro portable drive.

I am curious why there are issues with the 512GB Samsung 830 when Seagate states the GoFlex Thunderbolt 2.5" adapter is compatible with all there Seagate GoFlex portable drive works, including the 7200RPM GoFlex Pro drives and the large format 1TB drives. I would think these would use more power.

If the 512GB Samsung 830 fails to work, I'll have to swap the Mac mini internal drives in the HTPC. This would be incredibly inconvenient to switch to a 256GB and 512GB Samsung 830 internal configuration and move the 750GB WD Scorpio Black to a Seagate GoFlex Pro portable enclosure.

Maybe putting the 512GB Samsung 830 into an enclosure will make it connect more reliably.

philipma1957 · Feb 21, 2012

No I have not solved the issue. I am convinced the problem is in the samsung not the seagate. Also not power used. try using your samsung alone like I did see if it drops out. I am at the point of using the samsung in my pegasus r6 as it was flawless. The only drive i had a problem with was the samsung. It spikes the kill a watt meter often and a big spike.

seagate/samsung Alone 5 watts on the kill-a-watt it spikes to 10 and then drops out. often .

no other ssd did this 5 watts to 7 watts 2 watt spikes or 5 to 5 0 watt spikes.

shortcut3d · Feb 23, 2012

I'm concerned now. My order no longer shows up on Seagate's tracker. BH Photo also pulled the adapter only and is offering a bundle, but given the markup on the adapter only the bundle isn't too bad.

fgullama · Feb 23, 2012

shortcut3d said:
I'm concerned now. My order no longer shows up on Seagate's tracker. BH Photo also pulled the adapter only and is offering a bundle, but given the markup on the adapter only the bundle isn't too bad.

For the first time this morning I actually got tracking information for my order from Seagate that I placed on February 1st. I'm supposed to receive the adapter on Monday. From what they said last week, they were supposed to get another 300+ units today/tomorrow. I would give them a call to see what's up. If my tracking info disappeared I'd be concerned too!

Frank

philipma1957 · Feb 23, 2012

shortcut3d said:
I'm concerned now. My order no longer shows up on Seagate's tracker. BH Photo also pulled the adapter only and is offering a bundle, but given the markup on the adapter only the bundle isn't too bad.

pm me for a email address to seagate. that is how i got help from them.

timothevs · Feb 24, 2012

Thank you for posting such informative details on the GoFlex adapter. Your posts and insights as well as those of Shortcut3D convinced me to pick one up as well. It shipped out this morning from ProVantage (130$ with the Thunderbolt cable). A wee pricey for an enclosure (basically).

I hope to put my 128GB SATA III OCZ in it, and use it as my main boot drive for my iMac. It saves me from opening up my iMac. Thanks for your insights, and I look forward to any other tips/tricks and solutions you may find.

shortcut3d · Feb 24, 2012

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I have not received my pre-order from Seagate, but BH Photo shipped my order for their combo package. I plan to remove the 500GB 7200RPM drive and eBay it. I have a 512GB Samsung 830 waiting to go into the enclosure. I also have a bunch of 240GB OCZ Vertex 3 drives I can test as well.

martinm0 · Feb 24, 2012

In case anyone wasn't aware, other vendors are selling the Seagate Thunderbolt adapter. I had an order in with Seagate for weeks with no update; I called yesterday (they were having system issues) and was told it would be another 2-4 wks. The guy then told me that BH Photo had them, but as mentioned, they are only bundled with a hard drive. Just search for "STAE121" online and you should find a few other vendors.

In the end I picked mine up through Buy.com (via ebay) for $89 shipped (already have a T-Bolt cable).

Additionally, I've picked up some eSata to male Sata cables and Sata male to Sata female and will be attempting to connect a 3.5" HDD to the Seagate adapter via a HDD dock with eSata out... Hoping the T-Bolt adapter doesn't require a connection to the power side of the Sata plug and I can just run this cable to the data port and feed it through T-Bolt into my iMac and MBA. Not sure anyone has tried this yet, but if you have, let me know. I picked up the cables I referenced from Microsatacables.com (Item# CBL7PSMTESFBL20 and CBL7PSMTSFBL20).

jweek · Feb 24, 2012

has anyone used this with a external raid box?

I have one of these and it works well for a single sata hdd. I was thinking about using something like this :esata raid case and a sata to esata cable - i'm wondering if it make a cheap alternative to the pegasus?

martinm0 · Feb 24, 2012

jweek said:
I have one of these and it works well for a single sata hdd. I was thinking about using something like this :esata raid case and a sata to esata cable - i'm wondering if it make a cheap alternative to the pegasus?

Jweek! See my post above you. I'll be trying the same thing, though you need a different cable. See the cables I referenced in my post.

Also, if this does work it won't be as fast as the Pegasus due to the limited throughput of the eSata connection. Probably can't get more than 3.0Gbs, but that's still way faster than USB on an MBA...

jweek · Feb 24, 2012

martinm0 said:
Jweek! See my post above you. I'll be trying the same thing, though you need a different cable. See the cables I referenced in my post.

Also, if this does work it won't be as fast as the Pegasus due to the limited throughput of the eSata connection. Probably can't get more than 3.0Gbs, but that's still way faster than USB on an MBA...

Thanks for the cable info, I'm ordering some today to experiment with. I'm hoping to find an external raid box that supports Sata III and getting upwards of 6.0Gbs.

philipma1957 · Feb 24, 2012

jweek said:
I have one of these and it works well for a single sata hdd. I was thinking about using something like this :esata raid case and a sata to esata cable - i'm wondering if it make a cheap alternative to the pegasus?

martinm0 said:
Jweek! See my post above you. I'll be trying the same thing, though you need a different cable. See the cables I referenced in my post.

Also, if this does work it won't be as fast as the Pegasus due to the limited throughput of the eSata connection. Probably can't get more than 3.0Gbs, but that's still way faster than USB on an MBA...

jweek said:
Thanks for the cable info, I'm ordering some today to experiment with. I'm hoping to find an external raid box that supports Sata III and getting upwards of 6.0Gbs.

the seagate will work with these

just one

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816111112

top end of 200/mbs

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/usb/raid_1/Gmax_Portable

top end of 200 mb/s

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/EliteALmini/RAID/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB

top end of 200mb/s

the lbd can use two of the above and pull 400mb/s

martinm0 · Feb 24, 2012

philipma1957 said:
the seagate will work with these

just one

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816111112

top end of 200/mbs

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/usb/raid_1/Gmax_Portable

top end of 200 mb/s

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/EliteALmini/RAID/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB

top end of 200mb/s

the lbd can use two of the above and pull 400mb/s

That's great news! Have you tested this out personally, or is this theoretical? And what about a 4-8 bay 3.5" HDD JBOD config to eSata? Would this be able to be recognized through the T-Bolt sled from Seagate?

philipma1957 · Feb 24, 2012

martinm0 said:
That's great news! Have you tested this out personally, or is this theoretical? And what about a 4-8 bay 3.5" HDD JBOD config to eSata? Would this be able to be recognized through the T-Bolt sled from Seagate?

the 4 and 8 bay units are no go they do not have a built in port multipler.

the lbd I have tested the lbd can run up to 4hdds in raid0 or raid1 or raid00 or raid11 if you look at the lbd thread you can see a frankenstein setup that i did.

page 3 post 64

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1280118/

you could buy a lbd with 2 500gb hdd's in it and buy this

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MEQMHM7S10TB/ 275

along with this

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MEQMH0GBK/ 80 and the lbd is 400.

total is 755. you can play around with different setups combos etc.

2 empty elite dual mini's are 160.

a lbd is 459

http://www.macmall.com/p/LaCie-Removable-Hard-Drives/product~dpno~8903411~pdp.gjcjjie

so for 619 you have a 4 drive setup with only 2 500 gb hdds.

if you buy the pegasus

http://www.provantage.com/promise-technology-pr401us~7PROM1KU.htm 988 in stock with 4 1tb hdd's

if you sell the pegasus hdds on ebay you can get 300 bucks this gives you an empty pegasus for 688 this is worthwhile for some

users. I have used pegasus lacie seagate and sonnettech

I rate them; performance

1}pegasus

2}lacie

3}seagate

4}sonnettech

bang for the buck 1) pegasus, lacie a tie depends on what you need 3) seagate 4) sonnetech is really slow

The jury is still out for the seagate.. I get random drop outs my feeling is the mac mini t-bolt jack is not that well regulated so wattage surges occur in the adapter.

If I use mini lacie seagate never drop out.
if I use mini pegasus seagate never drop out.

if I use mini seagate I get random dropouts..

a lot with the samsung 830.

the samsung 810 the samsung 800 are good no dropouts

the crucial m4 128gb had a few drop outs.

the crucial m4 64gb had no drop outs.

I am afraid to test the 600gb intel as it is 1000 ssd and i do not have a warranty on it.

also the seagate does not fire up any 3.5 inch hdds I attached. but it did drive a 320gb hitachi and a 500gb hitachi hdd with 0 drop outs.

The mac mini has a low grade psu.. I think iMacs will not have this problem but I don't have any iMacs on hand to test this theroy.

shortcut3d · Feb 24, 2012

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I plan to test with several Seagate GoFlex Pro drives that are 7200RPM as well as 256GB / 512GB Samsung 830s and may throw in an OCZ Vertex 3 for good measure. I have the mid-range and server 2011 Mac minis as well as a 2011 15" MBP. I can say the MBP already does better with Thunderbolt to mini displayport. It doesn't have snow or flickering which happen after a few cycles with the Mac mini.

shortcut3d · Feb 25, 2012

Well it looks like I'm getting two Seagate GoFlex Thunderbolt adapters now. Seagate customer support finally sent me a valid tracking number. I originally wanted two, but wanted to test the performance before grabbing a second one. Oh well.

martinm0 · Feb 25, 2012

shortcut3d said:
Well it looks like I'm getting two Seagate GoFlex Thunderbolt adapters now. Seagate customer support finally sent me a valid tracking number. I originally wanted two, but wanted to test the performance before grabbing a second one. Oh well.

Same here. When I talked to Seagate on Friday they said it was going to be 2-4 weeks before any more were coming in. I ordered one through Buy.com and cancelled the one with Seagate, yet I got tracking info this morning that it will be here Monday from Seagate. Ugh.

philipma1957 · Feb 25, 2012

martinm0 said:
Same here. When I talked to Seagate on Friday they said it was going to be 2-4 weeks before any more were coming in. I ordered one through Buy.com and cancelled the one with Seagate, yet I got tracking info this morning that it will be here Monday from Seagate. Ugh.

me two I now have two more on the way. After all the testing I have done. I am really pretty sure the mini has a t-bolt power issue.

I have a base 2011 and a server 2011.

running mini lacie seagate flawless

running mini pegasus seagate flawless

running mini seagate spotty..

Why is it I always have to go back to the mini needs a brick psu with 110 watts as a hi end option?

I think that with all the t-bolt bus powered units right now, you have only the seagate and elgato 's ssds, are going to be spotty with mini's. really annoys me...

Good news is the macbook pro with its battery power and psu should be fine along with iMacs. Both pieces of gear have better psu's.. Apple has done a new firmware 1.6 for mini's I will test the seagate alone with the mini's to see if the firmware addressed the power spike/drop out issues.

The reason the adapter works at the end of a daisy chain with both the lacie and the pegasus is the seagate taps into the power supply of the lacie or the pegasus. As measured by the kill a watt meter. the power used is 5 extra watts with most ssd's and can spike up to 10 watts. it seems the mini's t-bolt bus/or psu can't deal with the spikes.

really eff'ing annoying. If anyone can do tests with macbook pros or imacs please do so. data will help. I would hate for a mac mini user to buy a 650 dollar elgato ssd and have the same issue. that i am having.

if you go to their website they have held back the unit. see thumbnail

my thoughts are they have had the same problem as the seagate. I am thinking that this t-bolt is not what i want as of today.

So far the best setup I have with t-bolt is the 6 bay pegasus to the mini server.

a raid0 4tb

a raid0 4tb

a 2tb time machine and

a ssd for osx..

I then clone the osx to the internals for back up.

this is a really fast setup that gives me what i what in a mac. it also costs too much for most users. I was lucky and purchased my pegasus before the flood I got a better price. 1320 for a 6 x 1tb unit I then sold the 6 1tb hdds after the flood. I have been spot buying 2tb seagates to fill it up. now a 6 x 2tb unit is 2499 at the apple store. plus tax. that is out of reach for most people.

Chemical1 · Feb 25, 2012

martinm0 said:
Same here. When I talked to Seagate on Friday they said it was going to be 2-4 weeks before any more were coming in. I ordered one through Buy.com and cancelled the one with Seagate, yet I got tracking info this morning that it will be here Monday from Seagate. Ugh.

The exact same thing happened to me, I called them and they said it would be another week so I said forget it, and cancelled the order. Then the next day I get a shipping notification. At this point I am going to just return it.

I ordered a Seagate t-bolt connector.

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