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I ordered a Seagate t-bolt connector.

UPDATE: Seagate GoFlex Satellite

I received a Seagate GoFlex Satellite today and was able to put it through its paces on the Seagate Thunderbolt GoFlex 2.5" adapter. My first impression is the device gets very warm paired together. Also, I was surprised that the drive charged and copied 231GB H.264 video without issue. I'm more confused about what causes the large SSDs to disconnect and be so unreliable.

Did anyone try changing the power savings using the Seagate tools? Apparently, there are sleep settings that can be disabled using these tools. Maybe these SSDs are having troubled with some sleep parameter.
 
Beliblis said:
Interesting thread. Has anyone had any problems with the Thunderbolt adapter, as described in the link below?

http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-GoFle...?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&filterBy=addOneStar
Click to expand...

yes and most problems were on large ssd's

such as a 512gb samsung series 830 and crucial 512gb ssd. the 256gb models and smaller work well. One user put a seagate 500gb hdd and it crashed doing a long copy of a big file.

I run my units with 240gb mushkin ssd

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226226

been flawless.

also works with this ssd ;

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167061

most testing has shown that sata III ssds with large size 512gb making copies of big files 1gb or more struggle.

very easy problem to avoid just use the right ssd.

crucial 128gb m4

crucial 256gb m4

mushkin 240gb the enhanced versions

mushkin 120gb

samsung 128gb series 810 or 830

samsung 256gb series 800 810 or 830

all have worked well I have done the testing on most of the ones above.

and also the intel 600 gb series 320.

i am very much a believer that the t-bolt jack in the mac mini is the problem it can be short of power. here is why



Every test run mac mini to lacie little big disk (power via wall wart) to seagate was flawless on all drives tested.

the power for the seagate comes from the lacie t-bolt jack with a separate power supply.


but when mac mini to seagate some drive fail. the power for the seagate comes from the mac mini t-bolt jack. this leads me to believe that once again the lack of a brick hurts the mac mini as the internal psu has no testicles.
 
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Wirelessly posted

To add to philipma's observations the issues also exist on the 2011 MacBook Pro line. I've tested my 480GB OWC ME Pro 6G and 512GB Samsung 830 in a Seagate GoFlex enclosure connected to the Seagate Thunderbolt GoFlex 2.5" adapter and had disconnects on all the 2011 Mac mini models AND the 2011 15" MacBook Pro. Testing was performed in both OSX and Windows 7 x64. The LaCie Thunderbolt Little Big Disk does seem to resolve the problem. No one has commented if other daisy chained combos work such as the Apple Thunderbolt Display.
 
My Thunderbolt/SSD speeds

Ok, so I've been reading these Thunderbolt speed threads while trying to decide on what Thunderbolt device to get and in the process I ran a few test to see what I could get.

My gear includes 2011 iMac i7 3.4Ghz 24GB ram with 2GB video card and standard 1TB HD. Pegasus R4 4TB and a LaCie 2TB Thunderbolt device(due to arrive next week) I did order the seagate one but returned it after reading the speeds posted on some of the threads. While good, it's not great imo. Here are some of my test and I hope they help you decide what you get.

First a quick recap of what I found important to me.

ALL are in Write/Read format. (162write/382read)

Online tests others have reported
Seagate Stae121 TB, Single Crucial M4 128GB - 200/382 (not bad)
1TB LBD(stock) 162/174 (sad)
SSD LBD(Stock) 257/445 (decent)
SSD LBD(1TB with 2 SSD installed 356/475 - (This is what I aim to do when my LBD arrives. Just paid $398 on Amazon for the 2TB one. April 2012) (Pretty fast)
(I found several test with these setups and they seem real consistent give or take 10/10

My Setup all with the iMac.
AJA test 2048x1556 10 bit RGB 4GB file
Pegasus R4 4TB(Stock) in Raid 0 512 sector and stripe - 560/452 (worth the $1000 imo)
Pegasus R4 with 1 SSD Crucial M4 128GB - 208/394
Pegasus R4 with 3 HD drives in Raid 0(3TB) - 400/331
Pegasus R4 with 2 HD drives in Raid 0(2Tb) - 380/235
Pegasus R4 with 2 SSD Crucial M4 Raid 0, 512 sector and stripe - 409/598
(so with Pegasus R4 with 2 SSD for 256GB getting 409/598 and 2 1TB HD for 2TB getting 380/235 is fairly decent however I miss the stock 560/452 speeds of the R4 in Raid 0)

I also have a Crucial M4 128GB in my 2011 13.3" 8GB ram Macbook Pro and I'm getting speeds of 190/518

AJA test 1920x1080 10 bit RGB 1GB file
Pegasus R4 4TB(Stock) in Raid 0 512 sector and stripe - 572/486
Pegasus R4 with 1 SSD Crucial M4 128GB - 273/352
Pegasus R4 with 3 HD drives in Raid 0(3TB) - 505/305
Pegasus R4 with 2 HD drives in Raid 0(2Tb) - 373/213
Pegasus R4 with 2 SSD Crucial M4 Raid 0, 512 sector and stripe - 525/507

So with the LBD with 2 Crucial 128GB installed I should be able to get 356/475 and 560/452 with the Pegasus R4(stock 4TB) OR
stay with the Pegasus R4 setup - 2 Crucial 128GB in Raid 0 installed at 409/598 and 2 - 1TB HD in raid 0 getting 380/235 I think I'm going to go with the LBD and Pegasus R4 setup as that will give me great speeds all around with a total of 4.5TB of space + 2 1TB HD(from stock LBD) that I can use in USB enclosures for backups or whatever. This is also the reason why I got the 2TB LBD. I don't need a fast drive for nightly backups.

I decided to go with the Crucial M4 128GB since I don't need a whole lot for just the OS and the reviews seem good and they are only $140 right now on Amazon. 128x2 for 256GB for the OS/applications is more than enough. The Pegasus OEM HD setup is for working files and I'm not worried about Raid 0 because I have external USB and FIrewire drives that are backing up the Raid 0 setup. I back up via TM and 2 other backups once a day each via Carbon Copy Cloner so I'm well covered. The internal HD of the iMac will be used as a scratch disk.

What I do...I'm a Photographer who edits a lot and does some video editing with FCPX.

Hope that all helps you out, I recommend either a LBD with 2 SSD and a Pegasus R4(stock) OR just the Pegasus R4 with 2 SSD's in Raid 0 and 2 HD's in Raid 0. You could even get the Pegasus R6 and do 2 SSD's in Raid 0 and 4 HD's in Raid 0 and get really great speeds all around and yes, I wish I had brought the R6. lol Luckily I got my R4's for $949 when they first came out(I have 2 R4's but they are on different iMac's) I haven't had any issues with my R4's. They are on 24-7 since i got them way back in September. Yes, they are expensive but damn they are nice. 🙂
 
LaCie 2TB Thunderbolt with 2 Crucial M4 128GB SSD

Got my LaCie 2TB Thunderbolt enclosure today and ripped out the HD's and replaced with 2 128GB Crucial M4 SSD's. Here are the speeds.

AJA 2048x1556 10-bit RGB 4GB files(write/read)
LaCie 2TB Thunderbolt(stock) 213/224 ($398)
LaCie with 2 Crucial M4 128GB SSD's 333/475 ($726)
LaCie SSD(stock version) 257/445 ($853)

Will pick up a couple of $5 usb enclosures for the stock HD's and use them as backup drives or odd stuff here and there. btw, I left the fan on. 🙂

Total cost, LaCie 2TB $398 + $140(SSD) + $140(SSD) + 48(TB cable) = $726
LaCie stock SSD's is more at $805 + $48 = $853
 
Got a hold of a 240GB Mushkin Chronos non-deluxe SSD drive, along with my thunderbolt cable to pair up with the Seagate T-bolt connector. Paid $223 for the drive, $47.50 for the cable, and $105 for the connector. Under $400, better deal than getting a Lacie TB LBD and then still having to spend on an SSD like I initially wanted.

With the iMac already turned on I plug in the cable into the computer and the drive into the connector. Nothing. The system doesn't pick up the drive at all. Did a shut down and powered it on again, a message popped up stating the drive is unreadable. I went 😱 for a moment, then figured the drive probably needs to be formatted and partitioned. OSX asks me if I want to use this disk for Time Machine. After format I have 239GB of usable space.

Question, my Kingston Hyper X SSD is the primary partition for OSX and I am down to only 2GB left, is there a way I can set up the Chronos to be an "overflow" of the Kingston drive, an extension of that primary partition? If so how would I go about doing that in OSX?

Transferred 10GB of data from the internal SSD drive to the Chronos without a hitch. Did something like 3GB worth of data in 6-7 seconds. Absolutely blown away! Thinking back in the days my Seagate X15 16GB Cheetas SCSI-320 drives were THE drives to own, heh.

Anyways, very happy with the results for what little money I forked out. Glad to see SSD prices dropping. Only 6 months ago I spent $420 on the Kingston SSD drive alone!

Synthetic benchmarks the Kingston HyperX owns, but in real life honestly I cannot tell the difference in performance.
 
Last edited:
how big is your kingston 240gb? if so the best you can do is off load some files manually to the mushkin. there are a lot of other solutions but this is the safest. if the kingston is 180gb or 120 gb you could use the mushkin ssd for your boot drive.

the kingston wins in benchmarks due to t-bolt chip latency. i have tested the mushkins with one insdie the mini and the second in the seagate t-bolt the intenal is quicker with benchmarks. I swapped the drives and the new internal was faster. this speed loss means almost nothing for all users in standard use. some rare users may find that it can speed up work but it would be users that are getting huge page outs to the ssd even if they maxed the ram. not too many imac users go past 32gb ram on a constant basis .
 
Wirelessly posted

My Seagate Thunderbolt GoFlex Adapter started causing problems in a long term high use scenario as my HTPC media drive. Yesterday, it just failed to appear after several restarts. This evening it was magically back. So, I figured moving the data to my recording drive would be prudent. The copy failed at the 57GB mark. The drive in use works fine in other GoFlex adapters. It's a standard Seagate 750GB GoFlex Pro that clocks 120MB/s on Thunderbolt.
 
shortcut3d said:
Wirelessly posted

My Seagate Thunderbolt GoFlex Adapter started causing problems in a long term high use scenario as my HTPC media drive. Yesterday, it just failed to appear after several restarts. This evening it was magically back. So, I figured moving the data to my recording drive would be prudent. The copy failed at the 57GB mark. The drive in use works fine in other GoFlex adapters. It's a standard Seagate 750GB GoFlex Pro that clocks 120MB/s on Thunderbolt.
Click to expand...

It does seem to get uncomfortably warm, both the adapter and the SSD drive. Maybe I'll get a USB powered fan and get some air circulation around it and see if that helps, if nothing else it won't hurt. I transferred 10GB data and noticed it got very warm immediately.

I want to use the thunderbolt drive for editing my video files, then store them back on the 1TB 2.5" usb 2.0 drive. The process of transferring files back and forth takes awhile, so I might just get the desktop Thunderbolt Goflex adapter and throw a 3TB mechanical drive to take over that duty instead. 18MB/s seems awfully slow now.
 
The Elgato Thunderbolt cable will be available starting on May 4th. I sold my 512GB Samsung 830 SSD Media because it did not work in the Seagate Thunderbolt GoFlex 2.5" Adapter. However, I still have the 480GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G. I'm curious to see if the Elgato Thunderbolt cable would fix the issues with large SSDs.
 
SSD Patriot PYRO 60GB issues

My GoFlex Thunderbolt finally arrived (I live in Europe). 2 days was everything nice, but now my SSD Patriot PYRO won't wake up after sleep. The led is glowing waking up my iMac and pulsing for few seconds, but after it it will just glow and system looks like the SSD is not reading or writing.

Tried SSD in FW800 and booted successfully, even SSD wake up after sleep. Also cloned SSD to 2,5 WD 640GB HDD and everything worked. Same it with my Macbook Pro 13" 😡

Any tips?
 
shortcut3d said:
The Elgato Thunderbolt cable will be available starting on May 4th. I sold my 512GB Samsung 830 SSD Media because it did not work in the Seagate Thunderbolt GoFlex 2.5" Adapter. However, I still have the 480GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G. I'm curious to see if the Elgato Thunderbolt cable would fix the issues with large SSDs.
Click to expand...

Very strange to quote myself...

I found the source of my failed Seagate Thunderbolt GoFlex 2.5" adapter was the Apple Thunderbolt cable. The Apple Thunderbolt cable will not work with any Thunderbolt devices or ports I have available. Normally, I trash cables that fail after a while, but this one is too expensive and will be returned.
 
shortcut3d said:
Very strange to quote myself...

I found the source of my failed Seagate Thunderbolt GoFlex 2.5" adapter was the Apple Thunderbolt cable. The Apple Thunderbolt cable will not work with any Thunderbolt devices or ports I have available. Normally, I trash cables that fail after a while, but this one is too expensive and will be returned.
Click to expand...

I've moved and copied over a hundred GB of data to and from the Goflex thunderbolt adapter and have not had any issues with the SSD thus far. $49 for a cable is a bit hard to swallow, so yeah return it/exchange it if you still can.
 
plucky duck said:
I've moved and copied over a hundred GB of data to and from the Goflex thunderbolt adapter and have not had any issues with the SSD thus far. $49 for a cable is a bit hard to swallow, so yeah return it/exchange it if you still can.
Click to expand...

For clarification, I was probably read/write +10 GB per day on average over Thunderbolt with the system on 24/7. Not sure if it was the volume of data or the up time that killed the cable. At least, it was not the drive or Seagate Thunderbolt GoFlex 2.5" adapter.

I placed an order for the Elgato Thunderbolt cable to see if it holds up better. Overall, its better suited for my personal use case because its much shorter. The black color also makes it a nice match to the Seagate Thunderbolt GoFlex 2.5" adapter. I'm hoping the cable makes a difference for the larger SSDs as well. Shorter cable length maybe better a providing power or whatever is the issue under load.
 
shortcut3d said:
For clarification, I was probably read/write +10 GB per day on average over Thunderbolt with the system on 24/7. Not sure if it was the volume of data or the up time that killed the cable. At least, it was not the drive or Seagate Thunderbolt GoFlex 2.5" adapter.

I placed an order for the Elgato Thunderbolt cable to see if it holds up better. Overall, its better suited for my personal use case because its much shorter. The black color also makes it a nice match to the Seagate Thunderbolt GoFlex 2.5" adapter. I'm hoping the cable makes a difference for the larger SSDs as well. Shorter cable length maybe better a providing power or whatever is the issue under load.
Click to expand...

Yeah would be nice for future reference to see if the new tb cable plays nice with larger 512gb ssd drives, in case ssd prices drop further and larger drives become within reach (sub $400).
 
shortcut3d said:
For clarification, I was probably read/write +10 GB per day on average over Thunderbolt with the system on 24/7. Not sure if it was the volume of data or the up time that killed the cable. At least, it was not the drive or Seagate Thunderbolt GoFlex 2.5" adapter.

I placed an order for the Elgato Thunderbolt cable to see if it holds up better. Overall, its better suited for my personal use case because its much shorter. The black color also makes it a nice match to the Seagate Thunderbolt GoFlex 2.5" adapter. I'm hoping the cable makes a difference for the larger SSDs as well. Shorter cable length maybe better a providing power or whatever is the issue under load.
Click to expand...
I ordered one from amazon today.

plucky duck said:
Yeah would be nice for future reference to see if the new tb cable plays nice with larger 512gb ssd drives, in case ssd prices drop further and larger drives become within reach (sub $400).
Click to expand...

I will test it with a 600 gb intel a
512 gb samsung and a 512gb crucial. btw amazon has 256gb crucials for 199 as of 11:50 am fri east coast time
 
Its actually $182 were I live after price beat. Itching to get another one but see no real use atm, kind of want to wait for the 512s but they still carry quite a premium.
 
I received the Elgato Thunderbolt cable today. However, I have no available large SSDs at the moment. I'm waiting for an order that will refresh my HTPC (mid-range 2011 Mac mini) drives and a cable signal amplifier. Once I get a maintenance window for the HTPC, I'll be able to test large SSDs because I'm swapping out the recording drive and plan to place in my 2011 15" MBP in a OWC Data Doubler sitting here. At that time, I'll have access to a 480GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G. I also should be getting my 512GB Samsung 830 back from testing around the same time frame.
 
Reliable SSDs with GoFlex Thunderbolt

After spending a lot of time on net looking for solution with my Sleep/Wake issues on Patriot Pyro.

Even newest 5.0.2 firmware is helpless and it is caused by SF-2281!

So, what SSDs can we prove as reliable with Thunderbolt? :apple:
 
Maila87 said:
After spending a lot of time on net looking for solution with my Sleep/Wake issues on Patriot Pyro.

Even newest 5.0.2 firmware is helpless and it is caused by SF-2281!

So, what SSDs can we prove as reliable with Thunderbolt? :apple:
Click to expand...

I ONLY SLEEP the screen not the computer I have the mushkin 240gb and it works fine. It awakes the screen each morning no problems.

Are you sleeping both computer and screen? What else is hookuped to your machine?

BTW I never had a good patriot ssd only had 3 but all had issues.
 
Wirelessly posted

FWIW, I get sleep issues with the Seagate Thunderbolt GoFlex 2.5" adapter with any drive. It's completely random though. I know it's the GoFlex adapter because sleep has never failed to resume with no drives plugged in. I've even seen this issue with the FW800 GoFlex 2.5" adapter.

I also played with the Elgato cable yesterday. It was very flexible and I like the length for mobile use. Elgato calls it out specifically for mobile use so I think that's their rationale behind charging more. The connectors seem to get hotter than the Apple cable.
 
It's interesting to hear that the Elgato cable gets hotter than the Apple one. I was quite surprised by how hot the Apple cable connectors got!

Looking forward to seeing if anyone gets it to work with larger SSD's.
 
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