Can I connect an external thunderbolt drive to two iMacs?

[tdmorris]

Hi

I've just picked up a LaCie 2big Thunderbolt series 6TB drive. It has two thunderbolt ports on the back of the drive. We'd like to have two iMacs plugged into this drive and thus be able to share it. Currently the drive will only show up on one iMac at a time.

Is it possible for us to plug two computers into the one drive? Or is the second thunderbolt port just for daisy-chaining drives?

Cheers!

 

[blevins321]

No, that would cause many problems if the drive didn't disable that. The second port is for daisy chaining only. That said, you could have one Mac share it with another via Ethernet. It wouldn't be as fast, but the files would be available.

 

[Lance-AR]

The thunderbolt bus requires devices be in a series only. I don't see how this would ever be possible.

 

[Apleleu93]

No, that would cause many problems if the drive didn't disable that. The second port is for daisy chaining only. That said, you could have one Mac share it with another via Ethernet. It wouldn't be as fast, but the files would be available.

Does connecting through Ethernet have much of a difference in speed rather then through wifi?

 

[g4cube]

Does connecting through Ethernet have much of a difference in speed rather then through wifi?

Close Wifi and 802.11n would be fast. direct Ethernet cable connection would be the fastest.

WiFi speeds vary depending on implementation of the interface within the filesharing connection of the computer, and the connection speed. Looking at the connection details will give you an indication of the theoretical speed.