Employing older Thunderbolt ports with newer TB cables?

[MacBook17]

As the cost of Thunderbolt cabling and TB adapters, in general, is fairly insane, I want to make the best out of our limited funds. We have a need to transfer large files [up to about 11 GB], so, needless to say, we prefer using the TB ports on our MacBook Pro (MBP) laptops for this purpose. The newest MBP that we own has (2) TB2 ports on it, so we would like to get the most out of those two ports.

Given the cost of TB cables, it really makes no sense investing in old cables, so my thought was to [somehow?] convert the TB2 female receptacle/ports on our MBP 15 to the USB-C female receptacles used by TB3 and TB4. That way, the male ends on a TB3 (or TB4) cable could be used for our file transfers until we can afford a machine with the newer TB ports. Has anyone ever seen this done?

 

[Juicy Box]

I think what you are looking for is Apple's bidirectional adapter for TB2 and TB3:

Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter

Effortlessly connect your Mac to a Thunderbolt 2 device with the Apple Thunderbolt 3 Adapter. Buy now at apple.com

www.apple.com

Some caveats:
The adapter isn't cheap, but you can sometimes find it used for cheaper prices than new on eBay.
The cable can be used on older Macs to use modern TB3 devices, but the cable doesn't provide power for those devices. They need their own power source, or could be powered from a TB3 dock.
The adapter has a female TB2 port and a male TB3 port, so additional adapters and/or cables might be required for whatever you are trying to connect.
Using the bidirectional adapter will probably not be any cheaper, if anything, more expensive than just finding a used TB2 cable.

Oh yeah, and it still requires a TB2 cable.

 

[Juicy Box]

Has anyone ever seen this done?

I have used a TB3 NVMe SSD as my boot drive on some of my TB1 Macs. It is the fastest non-RAID0 drive possible on the TB1 Macs. I used a TB3 dock to power the Samsung X5 TB3 NVMe, and connected to the Macs using a TB1/2 cable and Apple's bidirectional adapter.

 

[MacBook17]

Some Caveats:
The adapter isn't cheap, but you can sometimes find it used for cheaper prices than new on eBay.
The cable can be used on older Macs to use modern TB3 devices, but the cable doesn't provide power for those devices. They need their own power source, or could be powered from a TB3 dock.
The adapter has a female TB2 port and a male TB3 port, so additional adapters and/or cables might be required for whatever you are trying to connect.
Using the bidirectional adapter will probably not be any cheaper, if anything, more expensive than just finding a used TB2 cable. Oh yeah, and it still requires a TB2 cable.

Thanks for the posts, JB!

I've got a specific question for you that's based on the bolded bit of the quote (above). Is there a difference between a Thunberbolt (aka, TB1) cable and a TB2 cable? Judging by what I've witnessed, one will see a "thunderbolt" symbol only on the older cables. The newer cables, on the other hand, also include a "3" or a "4" on them that, heaven forbid, actually clarifies things.

 

[chrfr]

I've got a specific question for you that's based on the bolded bit of the quote (above). Is there a difference between a Thunberbolt (aka, TB1) cable and a TB2 cable? Judging by what I've witnessed, one will only see a "thunderbolt" symbol on the older cables. The newer cables, on the other hand, include a "3" or a "4" on them that, heaven forbid, actually clarifies things.

There is no difference in cables between Thunderbolt 1 and 2.