confused about eSATA-can i attach SSD to eSATA on kanex thunderbolt usb3 thingie?

[madeirabhoy]

sorry I'm sure this is a stupid question i just can't figure out which of the two answers is the stupidly obvious one.


have a 2011 iMac 2011 27", its two problems are lack of SSD and lack of USB 3.0.

i don't want to spend a huge amount of cash, i was looking at either a thunderbolt to usb 3.0 adaptor or a thunderbolt external SSD drive.

but the kanex adaptor has usb 3.0 plus an 'esata' connector. I'm not really sure what that is. is esata the same as sata? can i attach an internal SSD drive to that? its just that it'd save me using the slower usb 3.0 slot and also blocking up a slot.

 

[Designer Dale]

sorry I'm sure this is a stupid question i just can't figure out which of the two answers is the stupidly obvious one.


have a 2011 iMac 2011 27", its two problems are lack of SSD and lack of USB 3.0.

i don't want to spend a huge amount of cash, i was looking at either a thunderbolt to usb 3.0 adaptor or a thunderbolt external SSD drive.

but the kanex adaptor has usb 3.0 plus an 'esata' connector. I'm not really sure what that is. is esata the same as sata? can i attach an internal SSD drive to that? its just that it'd save me using the slower usb 3.0 slot and also blocking up a slot.

I think the "e" stands for external. An esata drive connection is kinda like Firewire for PC. Faster than USB but not Thunderbolt. You can us that adapter to hook an esata drive up to your Mac but it still won't transfer data faster than the USB port in the laptop. That's your bottleneck.

I have a dock with an esata port that takes either a bare full or half size drive. Platter or ssd. Before it died I had it connected to my MBPro by esata using an adapter card that fit in a slot on the older computers. SATA Express or something like that . It was a good backup.

Dale

 

[madeirabhoy]

I think the "e" stands for external. An esata drive connection is kinda like Firewire for PC. Faster than USB but not Thunderbolt. You can us that adapter to hook an esata drive up to your Mac but it still won't transfer data faster than the USB port in the laptop. That's your bottleneck.

I have a dock with an esata port that takes either a bare full or half size drive. Platter or ssd. Before it died I had it connected to my MBPro by esata using an adapter card that fit in a slot on the older computers. SATA Express or something like that . It was a good backup.

Dale

the usb in my imac is usb 2, its like treacle. im thinking that since i want usb 3.0 for my external drives, and also want an SSD for startup drive but dont want to open my mac unless i need to, that maybe this might do the job.

 

[satcomer]

sorry I'm sure this is a stupid question i just can't figure out which of the two answers is the stupidly obvious one.


have a 2011 iMac 2011 27", its two problems are lack of SSD and lack of USB 3.0.

i don't want to spend a huge amount of cash, i was looking at either a thunderbolt to usb 3.0 adaptor or a thunderbolt external SSD drive.

but the kanex adaptor has usb 3.0 plus an 'esata' connector. I'm not really sure what that is. is esata the same as sata? can i attach an internal SSD drive to that? its just that it'd save me using the slower usb 3.0 slot and also blocking up a slot.

Maybe you should look at OWC Turnkey upgrade path.

 

[madeirabhoy]

Maybe you should look at OWC Turnkey upgrade path.

cheers thats a great idea for a lot of people and i would if i could, but im in a wee island in the middle of the atlantic so its a bit far for me to take the imac.


the local worten said they could do in internal SSD, strangely they cant do it at the shop thats fixing my imac's screen as being an official apple repair centre they cant do third party work on apples, but they can at their other shop... however i was confused and a little bit concerned when the guy said that the easiest thing would be to pull out the dvd drive and replace that, when i thought that the sata cable attaching to the dvd drive was only sata 2 so that wouldnt make senese surely?

 

[Designer Dale]

cheers thats a great idea for a lot of people and i would if i could, but im in a wee island in the middle of the atlantic so its a bit far for me to take the imac.


the local worten said they could do in internal SSD, strangely they cant do it at the shop thats fixing my imac's screen as being an official apple repair centre they cant do third party work on apples, but they can at their other shop... however i was confused and a little bit concerned when the guy said that the easiest thing would be to pull out the dvd drive and replace that, when i thought that the sata cable attaching to the dvd drive was only sata 2 so that wouldnt make senese surely?

Here is a link to the info page on what I think is your system on EveryMac.com. The details say that it originally shipped with a SATA 3 internal bus speed but was updated by firmware to SATA 6.

If you connect your external drive to an external port you are limited to the speed of that interface. A USB 3 drive in a USB 2 jack transfers at USB 2 speeds. A sata 6 drive installed in a computer with a sata 3 system bus will run at sata 3 speeds. Check "About This Mac" to see if you can verify that this is a SATA 3 or 6 bus.

Replacing the optical drive with the SSD will put it on the internal bus, either SATA 3 or 6, rather than USB or Firewire. It will behave like a true internal drive. I replaced the optical in my 08 MacBook Pro with a 7200rpm HDD and the main drive with an SSD and made a Fusion drive out of them. Worked great until the graphics card died.

http://www.everymac.com/systems/app...num-mid-2011-thunderbolt-specs.html#macspecs1

Dale

 

[satcomer]

cheers thats a great idea for a lot of people and i would if i could, but im in a wee island in the middle of the atlantic so its a bit far for me to take the imac.

They ship to Europe via UPS, Brown and Fed Ex and you read about it at their Shipping Support page. They might serve your Island!