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He's talking about the original topic of this thread... of a USB 3.0 *TO* Thunderbolt Adaptor...

What you have with Kanex is a Thunderbolt to USB/eSATA adaptor...

The original topic was about a Thunderbolt to USB 3.0 adapter:

I am surprised that I still cant find a simple Thunderbolt to usb 3 adapter online! I know apple don't make one, yet they make a firewire and ethernet adapter.

Does anyone know if any third party adapters exist?

I know that some docking station hubs have been released but I only need one port and don't want to pay a few hundred dollars to add USB 3 to my 2011 Mac Mini.

TA

Brilliant thanks! I have been waiting for this for ages! I emailed Kanex about 6 months ago and they said they were developing one, finally it's not far off! :)

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This simple usb 3.0 adapter is on its way!

Image

Hopefully it is full 5Gbps and not 2.5Gbps like the overpriced belkin hub.

Thanks to Genea for finding this!


At some point a USB 3.0 to thunderbolt adapter was discussed too, but that was not what the OP asked.
 
[[ You are kidding, right? ]]

No, not kidding at all.

If there was a sizable market for a thunderbolt-to-USB3 adapater, there would be a number of such adapters on the market now.

That's how "markets" work. Where there's enough of a need, there will be an effort to -fill- that need.

The reason that there has yet-to-appear a tbolt-to-USB adapter suggests that the companies that are capable of building such devices realize the market is either nonexistant, or so small that not enough units could be sold to cover the cost of developing, building and then distributing the product.


Ordinarily this would make some sense but it doesn't apply at all to the Thunderbolt peripheral market, or else people would have been saying "the fact that two years later we still have no Thunderbolt docks of any kind means there's no market for it".

There's always been a market for Thunderbolt peripherals of all kinds but Intel botched it and alienated manufacturers who weren't inclined to get in line for the licensing agreement and gear up for a widget they couldn't deliver for years due to Intel's misguided sense of how to market a high end port with exclusivity.
 
He's talking about the original topic of this thread... of a USB 3.0 *TO* Thunderbolt Adaptor...

What you have with Kanex is a Thunderbolt to USB/eSATA adaptor...

Yup... Going the other way around is completely doable. However USB3->TB will never come out. Unless thunderbolt3 implements a reverse compatibility built into the MOBO for it.
 
Just received my Kanex Tbolt to USB3 and eSATA adapter. Just went through a few drives and everything's flying. Interestingly, a particular bus powered drive, which mounts great on my 2008 on FW80 but doesn't get enough juice on the 2011's FW800 to mount is doing the same on its USB3 port via the Thunderbolt, so I'm reticent to assume it's the adapter on this. On a cursory run through everything else with other hardware seems to be as expected.
 
Now that Intel will put Thunderbolt 3 on USB C ports, instead of using the Display Port design, we have one port to rule them all. We can expect to see rMBP, Mac Pro, iMac, and Mini being updated late this year into next year with USB C ports that do TB3. This will part of the Skylake and Alpine Ridge introduction.

Unless absolutely necessary,I would not be investing a dime right now in anything that does TB 1/2 via a Display Port...or USB 3.o or 3.1 via anything but USB C ports. Hopefully we will hear more at WWDC next week.
 
It's still too expensive. I was looking at a 4TB thunderbolt drive last night for $457 and instead got a 4TB 3.0 drive for $113. I was going to pick up fours drives for what I could have gotten the thunderbolt drive for but decided to wait a month or two. I will get more.
 
It's still too expensive. I was looking at a 4TB thunderbolt drive last night for $457 and instead got a 4TB 3.0 drive for $113. I was going to pick up fours drives for what I could have gotten the thunderbolt drive for but decided to wait a month or two. I will get more.

You really don't get any advantage with Thunderbolt unless you're dealing with multiple hard drive enclosures, where you're using RAID to boost speed. Then TB craps all over USB3 enclosures for performance.

BTW, I hope you didn't buy WD or Seagate :) Their budget drives aren't renowned for longevity, so do make sure you backup everything important.
 
It's still too expensive. I was looking at a 4TB thunderbolt drive last night for $457 and instead got a 4TB 3.0 drive for $113. I was going to pick up fours drives for what I could have gotten the thunderbolt drive for but decided to wait a month or two. I will get more.
Where are you shopping? :eek:
 
You really don't get any advantage with Thunderbolt unless you're dealing with multiple hard drive enclosures, where you're using RAID to boost speed. Then TB craps all over USB3 enclosures for performance.

BTW, I hope you didn't buy WD or Seagate :) Their budget drives aren't renowned for longevity, so do make sure you backup everything important.

More true for the more expensive USB devices, but many many USB drive enclosures are quirky when connected to a MacOS. If time is money and one does not want to deal with USB quirks, TB is the way to go. My life has been so much easier since I've been weaning away fro USB crap. USB is great for printers, keyboards, even syncing iPhones, portable drives, but marginal at best for desktop drives.
 
It's still too expensive. I was looking at a 4TB thunderbolt drive last night for $457 and instead got a 4TB 3.0 drive for $113. I was going to pick up fours drives for what I could have gotten the thunderbolt drive for but decided to wait a month or two. I will get more.
That TB enclosure may have had a $350 enterprise drive in it, where the USB has a $30 consumer drive.... but I dunno where you were shopping. The 4TB Mybook TB seems to be selling for $270.
 
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