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Firewire 800 to Thunderbolt, or USB 3.0 to Thunderbolt?

B

Boullan

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 28, 2013
11
1
I have a OWC Mercury Elite Pro 3.0 TB drive, rockin' a USB 3.0 and two Firewire 800 ports.

I also have a 2015 13" MacBook Pro with Retina display, with a plain ol' USB 2.0 and two Thunderbolts.

What would be the best cable for connecting them? Guessing it's either Firewire 800 to Thunderbolt, or possibly USB 3.0 to Thunderbolt...?

This would mostly be for video editing.

Thanks in advance, guys.
 
Since both the drive and the computer have a thunderbolt interface, why not use that, instead of some sort of complex conversion.

btw, I don't think there's any cables that allow you to hook up USB to TB or FW to TB. They just don't exist.
 
maflynn said:
Since both the drive and the computer have a thunderbolt interface, why not use that, instead of some sort of complex conversion.
Click to expand...

I may be wrong here, but I don't think the OWC drive has a thunderbolt interface, only USB 3.0 and FireWire 800.
 
Oh, ok, I misunderstood your post, my apologies. I took the TB in your post as ThunderBolt. My bad.

Well then you're options are severely limited to maybe some sort of TB docking station that has USB ports, but I don't know if that's a feasible option.
 
Put all the drives into enclosures that do USB 3 with UASP support. USB 3 Drive enclosures that do UASP are cheap on Amazon or Newegg. Forget FW as relic of the past like USB 2 or USB 1. With USB 3 USAP you have a transport that will now bottleneck any read/write sessions to a spinning drive. On the other hand if you had external SSDs, then it could be worth the extra cost to go with Thunderbolt enclosures to have a transport that will not bottleneck the read/write sessions with SSDs.
 
MCAsan said:
Put all the drives into enclosures that do USB 3 with UASP support. USB 3 Drive enclosures that do UASP are cheap on Amazon or Newegg. Forget FW as relic of the past like USB 2 or USB 1. With USB 3 USAP you have a transport that will now bottleneck any read/write sessions to a spinning drive. On the other hand if you had external SSDs, then it could be worth the extra cost to go with Thunderbolt enclosures to have a transport that will not bottleneck the read/write sessions with SSDs.
Click to expand...

Sure USB 3.0 is fast, but it can wreck havoc with Bluetooth connected devices like the wireless mouse/keypad/keyboard. This is a legit problem, that gave me grief for months. Intel even wrote a whitepaper about it: http://www.intel.com/content/www/us...al-bus/usb3-frequency-interference-paper.html
 
OP wrote above:
"I also have a 2015 13" MacBook Pro with Retina display, with a plain ol' USB 2.0 and two Thunderbolts."

Ahem... if it's a 2015 MacBook, it has USB3 ports, does it not?

USB3 is FAR FASTER than Firewire800.

That's the connection to use.

Also, make sure you use USB3 connecting cables with BLUE on the ends. Older USB cables may not work at full USB3 speeds...
 
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Oh. Didn't know that the USB port on my Macbook was USB 3.0!

So, in that case, would a USB 3.0 -> USB 3.0 cable be preferable to a FireWire 800 -> Thunderbolt adapter?
 
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UASP is of no benefit when dealing with a single HDD, it's more for SSDs. And if you want REAL speed, you can get a Thunderbay 4 mini from OWC and RAID multiple SSDs to get vastly faster speeds than USB3 with UASP could ever get.
 
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