stable thunderbolt dock

[Sossity]

I remembered my 2011 mac mini has a thunderbolt port, and I have needed addional ports, usb, firewire, etc, and realized instead of trying to get hard drive enclosures with multiple ports, I could get a thunderbolt dock with ports.


I am looking for one with a firewire 800 port, usb, esata looks nice, but I had problems with esata on my mac.

I looked at a few models online, and some seem to have issues with sleep wake and hard drives dismounting and errors. I will use this with external hard drives, doing long backups, so I need the dock to be stable and reliable.

 

[ColdCase]

My Startech docks are stable, the new one has eSATA, don't think they have FW, but Apple's TB to FW converter works well. It has several USB ports, runs relatively cool.

A list of Docks here:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1831181/

 

[paulrbeers]

I remembered my 2011 mac mini has a thunderbolt port, and I have needed addional ports, usb, firewire, etc, and realized instead of trying to get hard drive enclosures with multiple ports, I could get a thunderbolt dock with ports.


I am looking for one with a firewire 800 port, usb, esata looks nice, but I had problems with esata on my mac.

I looked at a few models online, and some seem to have issues with sleep wake and hard drives dismounting and errors. I will use this with external hard drives, doing long backups, so I need the dock to be stable and reliable.

I use an Akitio ThunderDock with no issues. With that said, I never let my Mini's sleep since they are servers and at idle pull less than 10w (so why would I care).... I've used the USB 3.0 and the eSATA ports off it with no issues. It probably isn't the cheapest of the Docks, but it works well for me connected to a 2012 Mac Mini.

 

[cube]

By your requirements, I think the only one is the "Akitio" = inXtron = Macpower. Raidsonic is rebadging it in Europe.

I have good experience with this brand, so I almost bought one, but in the end I traded off the FireWire for other usual ports.

FW is missing in general across docks.

 

[cube]

My Startech docks are stable, the new one has eSATA, don't think they have FW, but Apple's TB to FW converter works well. It has several USB ports, runs relatively cool.

A list of Docks here:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1831181/

The Startechs don't have FW, and with at least the 2, it is not possible to get an external monitor working properly again after unplugging the dock without rebooting. The CalDigit does not seem to have this problem, it is working quite well for me, but I have not used the audio.

 

[ColdCase]

The Startechs don't have FW, and with at least the 2, it is not possible to get an external monitor working properly again after unplugging the dock without rebooting. The CalDigit does not seem to have this problem, it is working quite well for me, but I have not used the audio.

Yeah I mentioned it doesn't have FW but a TB to FW adapter is no big deal.

My Startech, both versions, have never had a problem unplugging anything... although the mac sometimes does so even without the dock. In fact the dock makes the rMBP and mini much more stable with monitors, sleep, and disconnect issues. What other kinds of things do you have daisy chained?

Doesn't you caldigit have that annoying audio pop when going in and out of sleep along with getting super hot? Oh wait, you mentioned you don't use the audio. What do you do for audio?

 

[cube]

Yeah I mentioned it doesn't have FW but a TB to FW adapter is no big deal.

My Startech, both versions, have never had a problem unplugging anything... although the mac sometimes does so even without the dock. In fact the dock makes the rMBP and mini much more stable with monitors, sleep, and disconnect issues. What other kinds of things do you have daisy chained?

Doesn't you caldigit have that annoying audio pop when going in and out of sleep along with getting super hot? Oh wait, you mentioned you don't use the audio. What do you do for audio?

No daisy chaining.

I have my Dacmagic connected via USB (so it is limited to 48KHz, I should get a USB -> digital audio dongle able of multichannel at least at 96KHz).

I started using the Dacmagic via USB when I discovered that the Startech SPDIF is only capable of 48KHz (and unable of multichannel except for specific softwares activating passthrough on their own).

So, for now it's a downgrade from the Mac audio port, which is capable of multichannel optical at 96KHz (which was going this way to the Dacmagic).

The Dacmagic does digital multichannel passthrough to my digital stack and DAC to my analog stereo stack.