Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Do you use your Thunderbolt ports and if you do, for what?

Hieveryone said:
I have a 13" retina. I use the USB ports, HDMI port, and headphone jack regularly.

I never use the thunderbolt ports. I'll probably end up using the SD card slot before the thunderbolt ports.

What do you use them for?
Click to expand...

monitors

----------
Hieveryone said:
I'm guessing you have the thunderbolt display? I'm not sure if there are other monitors that have thunderbolt. I have a Dell monitor and have a DVI to HDMI cable I use.
Click to expand...

displayport, dvi, vga, hdmi all work with the right adapter
 
Ethernet adapter, firewire adapters and esata adapter.

No thunderbolt devices as yet, but glad I can finally use esata on a macbook
 
Thunderbolt speed.

i have a mac mini with thunderbolt port, i bought two thunderbolt adaptors both for seagate drives. i have connected them to my mac mini, downloaded the blackmagic test programs,

now i know that it say up to 10gbs speed but the best i can get i just over 100mps..

what i want to know is there a setting on the mac i should have changed to help convert to thunderbolt..or have i just wasted money and time...
 
maccron said:
i have a mac mini with thunderbolt port, i bought two thunderbolt adaptors both for seagate drives. i have connected them to my mac mini, downloaded the blackmagic test programs,

now i know that it say up to 10gbs speed but the best i can get i just over 100mps..

what i want to know is there a setting on the mac i should have changed to help convert to thunderbolt..or have i just wasted money and time...
Click to expand...

You are limited by the platter of your external drive. The only way to see it push past 400MB/s or more is to use a Thunderbolt SSD drive. Standard rotational Thunderbolt platters like the HD-PATU3 will only operate at standard HDD speeds (100MB/s or so).

I have a 12TB Pegasus R6 RAID array and it easily hits 780MB/s in RAID 0 configuration over Thunderbolt.
 
thuderbolt speed

so did i get the wrong things..they are both seagate drives. and i got the adaptors, but your saying that the mac mini will only send so much data
so 100 mps is all i will get..then this was a waster of money and time...or is there a setting on the mac that i should have changed..
 
Thunderbolt dock, daisy-chain of external drives especially my external SSDs I use for scratch.
 
Thunderbolt

so if i have the HDD drive i will not be moving very fast or as fast as the mac mini hard drive can tranfer data. if i got the SSD drive i could use the thunderbolt and it would deliver the speed i was looking for...so there is no need for thunderbolt on a standard HDD drive.

Will there be any improvement over the rest of the media...usb firewire etc?
 
maccron said:
so did i get the wrong things..they are both seagate drives. and i got the adaptors, but your saying that the mac mini will only send so much data
so 100 mps is all i will get..then this was a waster of money and time...or is there a setting on the mac that i should have changed..
Click to expand...

The limit with HDDs is the rate at which data will come off or go to the physical disk, it only spins so fast and can't be made to go quicker with any "setting on the mac".

You could have an infinitely-fast interface, it cannot go faster than the drive will move data.
 
maccron said:
so if i have the HDD drive i will not be moving very fast or as fast as the mac mini hard drive can tranfer data. if i got the SSD drive i could use the thunderbolt and it would deliver the speed i was looking for...so there is no need for thunderbolt on a standard HDD drive.

Will there be any improvement over the rest of the media...usb firewire etc?
Click to expand...

Yup, your reasoning is more or less right. You need to know what are your limiting factors.

For instance, my 15" rMBP has got an internal SSD along with Thunderbolt 2. I connect my HD-PATU3 over TB and get 100MB/s, because the HD-PATU3 only contains a 5400rpm drive in it. Taking apart the HD-PATU3 and putting in my own Samsung 840 Evo 250GB SSD in it increases its speeds to 400MB/s.

In another example, let's say my iMac has an internal HDD and I have a Thunderbolt SSD. I can copy things back and forth between the HDD and the TB SSD at only 100MB/s, because the internal drive is the limiting factor.

Thunderbolt peripherals are useless with HDD drives, because they're the limiting factor. If you want high speed performance with HDD drives, you have to get a Thunderbolt RAID enclosure, plus four to six HDD drives, put them in the enclosure and set the drives up as a single logical volume (RAID 0).

I did that with my Pegasus R6 and get 750-800 MB/s with six 7200rpm HDDs in an RAID 0 array.

The best solution for you if you want a high speed external drive is a LaCie 256GB Rugged SSD.
 
I use them

I use both of mine constantly. Most of the time my 13" rMBP sits on my desk at home. I have it connected to two external monitors, one via HDMI, and one via thunderbolt (but not the overpriced Apple Thunderbolt Display*). My other thunderbolt port is being used with an ethernet adapter so I can keep connected to my gigabit network, which isn't strictly necessary but is nice since its so much faster than WiFi on file transfers to my Synology.

I also have an external (but wireless) keyboard and mouse hooked up via logitech unifying receiver in one of the USB ports (leaving the other USB port open for USB keys and whatnot).

Frankly, I wish the computer had a 3rd Thunderbolt port and a couple more USB3 ports, but nothing is perfect :p

* I have this one: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00906HNZU/ref=wms_ohs_product?ie=UTF8&psc=1
 
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
- Thunderbolt to GigaBit ethernet adapter
- Apple Thunderbolt Display
- WD Thunderbolt raid array
- BlackMagic HD-SDI/HDMI Recorder
- BlackMagic HD-SDI/HDMI Output
- Lacie External SSD

Most of those things are broadcast video related. Having Thunderbolt gave me cheap and portable broadcast video solutions!!
 
I use it purely for an HDMI adapter - Its nice to have everything out of the left side of the MBP and the right hand side clear for my Magic Mouse.

I wanted a thunderbolt drive, but picked up a cracking deal on a USB3.0 drive . . . . so no real use yet. :)
 
I use them to connect a projector and external screens and monitors with the tb --> vga adapter.
 
I have a 15 inch MacBook Pro Retina - original version.

At home I use both Thunderbolt ports, one is connected to a Drobo 5D - which I love - and the other to a Seagate Desktop 4TB drive.

On holiday (often safari) I run a portable Seagate Goflex Thunderbolt (bus powered) adapter with SSD drives attached - very fast.

On the other port I have an identical Seagate Goflex with a SATA to CF adapter (very cheap form eBay) and I use this to transfer photographs to my MacBook and also to the other SSD.

This is a very fast solution for transferring the thousands of photographs that I would typically take each day.

I really really really want Apple to refresh their Thunderbolt display - with at least a slim body, less reflective display and USB 3.0
 
why thunderbolt?.

I revamped my computer system, bought the newest Mac mini on the market, 2.3 GHZ intel quad core, 1TB hard drive, I all so changed all my external hard drives to thunderbolt, figured I would get that" up to 10gb of transfer speed.

Well that not what happen..it the hard drive , thunderbolt can be fast , but if you have a HHD then you may get up to 150mb transfer speed, oh what happen to the " up to 10gb download transfer speed,, the two adaptor and cable were not easy to buy thought it was a little to much for a cable but ok, I Daisy chain them and honestly I don't see much of a difference, unless I didn't turn on something or change a setting there no big difference,

So in conclusion if you can,t get the SUPER SSD, then you wasted money, I mean it faster but not what I expected. If some one has a better idea I open to it, they should really remove the " UP TO 10GB....What's your view?
 
Last edited:
maccron said:
I revamped my computer system, bought the newest Mac mini on the market, 2.3 GHZ intel quad core, 1TB hard drive, I all so changed all my external hard drives to thunderbolt, figured I would get that" up to 10gb of transfer speed.

Well that not what happen..it the hard drive , thunderbolt can be fast , but if you have a HHD then you may get up to 150mb transfer speed, oh what happen to the " up to 10gb download transfer speed,, the two adaptor and cable were not easy to buy thought it was a little to much for a cable but ok, I Daisy chain them and honestly I don't see much of a difference, unless I didn't turn on something or change a setting there no big difference,

So in conclusion if you can,t get the SUPER SSD, then you wasted money, I mean it faster but not what I expected. If some one has a better idea I open to it, they should really remove the " UP TO 10GB....What's your view?
Click to expand...

Limit of Hard Disk technologies I'm afraid, has nothing whatsoever to do with the thunderbolt port.

This information is all over the internet.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back