Speed of Target Disk Mode - Thunderbolt vs FireWire 800

[MyMacLab]

I bought a Thunderbolt cable for Target Disk Mode because it has 10 Gbps throughput, and it is about 12 times faster than FireWire 800. However, according to my test results by QuickBench, it is not that fast as I expected. The Read speed is around 3 times faster and the Write speed is around 2 times faster only. Hopefully, there will be a Thunderbolt firmware update soon.

mid 2011 iMac 27 - SATA3 SSD RAID 0 (OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G SSD 120G * 2)
early 2011 MacBook Pro 13" - SATA 3 SSD RAID 0 (OCZ Vertex 3 120G * 2)

MBP acts as an external device to iMac via Thunderbolt and FireWire 800.

Target Disk Mode via Thunderbolt

Target Disk Mode via FireWire 800

-Eddie

 

[idonotliketostu]

Did you bench your 13" macbook pro raid by itself?

 

[larkost]

You are probably seeing the limits of your drive rather than the link speed. That is about the maximum sustained speeds I see from similar RAIDed drives.