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oxband

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 10, 2009
333
4
I want to be able to connect an external hard drive and two monitors at once to my 15 inch retina MBP. It has two thunderbolt ports. Are there thunderbolt hubs that let me plug multiple thunderbolt devices into the same hub to connect them all to the MBP?
 

MCAsan

macrumors 601
Jul 9, 2012
4,587
442
Atlanta
Thunderbolt like SCSI before it is a chain topology. So you link from the computer to each device in turn. Any device with only on TB port obviously has to be at the end of the chain.

USB topology can have hubs, TB not.
 

ColdCase

macrumors 68040
Feb 10, 2008
3,358
276
NH
There are no hubs in thunderbolt, its a PCI bus. There are docking stations that can do somewhat what you want.

You can daisy chain devices that are designed to be daisy chained, but typically you can only have one display in the chain.

So buy a two port TB hard drive (or RAID enclosure). Connect the HD to one of the Mac TB ports, connect one display to the other Mac TB port. Connect the other display to the second TB port on the HD, the HD and display are daisy chained. You will use both MAC TB ports but also have two displays and a Hard drive (or RAID) connected.

The displays don't have to be TB, they can be display port... or other types with adapters.
 
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