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Metatron2008
You're it
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join:2008-09-02
united state

Metatron2008

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THunderbolt drives are rediculously priced.

Anybody know of some thunderbolt enclosures to put ssds in? I wouldn't care if they are Chinese knockoffs (That just means the price is super low due to not needing apple certification, everything's made in china anyway..), I just would like to find some thunderbolt enclosures...

HiVolt
Premium Member
join:2000-12-28
Toronto, ON

HiVolt

Premium Member

Dejavu FireWire when it was new... It's the Apple Tax for sure, as there are very few PC options for thunderbolt even now 2 years after its debut.

dirtyjeffer0
Posers don't use avatars.
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join:2002-02-21
London, ON

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to Metatron2008
said by Metatron2008:

Anybody know of some thunderbolt enclosures to put ssds in? I wouldn't care if they are Chinese knockoffs (That just means the price is super low due to not needing apple certification, everything's made in china anyway..), I just would like to find some thunderbolt enclosures...

looking the same, and being the same, aren't the same.

Metatron2008
You're it
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join:2008-09-02
united state

Metatron2008

Premium Member

Yeah, I could not only get a couple enclosures but put something like a Samsung 830 or 840 pro in them and end up with faster speeds and a lower price!

And most enclosures don't even look the same as regular external drives anyway

sfogliatelle
We Is Whut We Am
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join:2002-05-29
Baton Rouge, LA

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I'm curious as to how much faster Thunderbolt is compared to USB 3.0?

mromero
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join:2000-12-07
Fullerton, CA

mromero

Premium Member

»So...Just How Fast is Thunderbolt?
rugby
I think I know it all.
join:2000-09-26
Plainfield, IN

rugby to sfogliatelle

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Thunderbolt could handle the 500MBps read/write of a good SSD. USB 3 can do around 200MBps-ish. I've got an M4 SSD in a USB3 case and it's pretty fast.
kitsune
join:2001-11-26
Sacramento, CA

1 recommendation

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said by HiVolt:

Dejavu FireWire when it was new... It's the Apple Tax for sure, as there are very few PC options for thunderbolt even now 2 years after its debut.

Apple isn't the one charging for Thunderbolt. Intel is. Apple was only a collaborator, main tech is owned by Intel.

skeechan
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1 recommendation

skeechan to Metatron2008

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to Metatron2008
Better off with USB3. T-Bolt is largely worthless given it doesn't even support networking. Hell, firewire supports networking.

HiVolt
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join:2000-12-28
Toronto, ON

HiVolt to kitsune

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said by kitsune:

said by HiVolt:

Dejavu FireWire when it was new... It's the Apple Tax for sure, as there are very few PC options for thunderbolt even now 2 years after its debut.

Apple isn't the one charging for Thunderbolt. Intel is. Apple was only a collaborator, main tech is owned by Intel.

I'm not talking about that... It's the fact that Thunderbolt accessories have so far been pretty much confined to Macs, is what makes the manufacturers of enclosures and things charge higher prices, just because the target audience is Mac users, which will pay more...

You seriously can't tell me a thunderbolt bridge board with chip for a sata hard drive demands a $100-200 premium over an equivalent USB 3.0 or eSATA one?

skeechan
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skeechan

Premium Member

It comes from the lack of volume. They aren't producing enough to get the price down. Unfortunately there isn't the demand to support them producing enough to get the price down. The market just isn't that big.

Metatron2008
You're it
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united state

Metatron2008

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I think I'll just get a usb 3.0 enclosure for now and a Samsung 830 or 840.
rugby
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join:2000-09-26
Plainfield, IN

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said by skeechan:

Better off with USB3. T-Bolt is largely worthless given it doesn't even support networking. Hell, firewire supports networking.

Are you talking about direct networking through the firewire port with IP addresses? You can get the Apple Thunderbolt to Ethernet port and solve that problem. OR you can get crazy and get the 10Gbe adapters on both ends.
MichelR
join:2011-07-03
Trois-Rivieres, QC

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said by skeechan:

It comes from the lack of volume. They aren't producing enough to get the price down. Unfortunately there isn't the demand to support them producing enough to get the price down. The market just isn't that big.

Thunderbolt will need to make a serious break into the PC market for this to happen.

I have a WD 6Tb Thunderbolt drive (I think it's a couple of drives, really) and it's pretty sweet, even though it was expensive (plus the $50 cable...) Beats the crap out of the USB 2.0 drive I had to do the same work before (I have a 2011 iMac, so it only has USB 2.0).

HiVolt
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said by skeechan:

It comes from the lack of volume. They aren't producing enough to get the price down. Unfortunately there isn't the demand to support them producing enough to get the price down. The market just isn't that big.

Well at these prices, how are they supposed to get higher volume?

They should have made their move before Macs got USB 3.0 ports. Now most people who just want a decent external drive can get a USB 3.0 drive off the shelf for $100 and have 100MB/sec+ transfer.

Octavean
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said by Metatron2008:

Anybody know of some thunderbolt enclosures to put ssds in? I wouldn't care if they are Chinese knockoffs (That just means the price is super low due to not needing apple certification, everything's made in china anyway..), I just would like to find some thunderbolt enclosures...

The cheapest one that comes to mind is the "Seagate Backup Plus Portable Thunderbolt Adapter (STAE128)" which can be about ~$88. This doesn't include a Thunderbolt cable though. There is also only a single Thunderbolt port so this device will end / terminate the chain. It also might not fit anything other then a 2.5" drive.
said by kitsune:

said by HiVolt:

Dejavu FireWire when it was new... It's the Apple Tax for sure, as there are very few PC options for thunderbolt even now 2 years after its debut.

Apple isn't the one charging for Thunderbolt. Intel is. Apple was only a collaborator, main tech is owned by Intel.

said by skeechan:

It comes from the lack of volume. They aren't producing enough to get the price down. Unfortunately there isn't the demand to support them producing enough to get the price down. The market just isn't that big.

Indeed, Intel seems responsible for Thunderbolt's limited distribution in the market which in turn effects price. Apple computers while growing in market share don't support the volumes necessary to force Thunderbolt prices down. Not all Mac computers even support Thunderbolt so then it becomes a subset of supported Macs with respect to volume.

It was my understanding that Intel specs and certification required a specific use of Intel iGPU video subsystems which is why the more powerful / expensive / pro-sumer Intel Sandy Bridge-E LGA2011 X79 / C606 platform doesn't have Thunderbolt support now in the PC market while the lower-end Ivy Bridge LGA1155 / Z77 does,....

Its Thought that any Mac Pro refresh would be based on Intel Ivy Bridge-E LGA2011 / X79 / C606 (or new chipset / same socket) however there hasn't been any indication that Ivy Bridge-E (an upgrade from Sandy Bridge-E) would have an Intel iGPU. A process shrink still wouldn't likely make an iGPU a viable option on what is already a large and expensive chip.

To be clear, technically an Intel iGPU shouldn't be necessary for Thunderbolt support but it seems to be something Intel mandates anyway and Apple or any other company would likely have to comply.

not quite right
I'm not cool enough to be a Mac person
join:2001-06-23
Puyallup, WA

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How about this for $5 bucks? USB 3.0 not thunderbolt though. »eshop.macsales.com/item/ ··· ast13Mar

HiVolt
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Toronto, ON

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said by Octavean:

To be clear, technically an Intel iGPU shouldn't be necessary for Thunderbolt support but it seems to be something Intel mandates anyway and Apple or any other company would likely have to comply.

Well a Mac Pro will certainly not have integrated graphics, but a PCI-E card... And how Apple handles that will be interesting... Some sort of custom video card with thunderbolt data IO as well as video output...

This is what I never liked about the connector that its shared with the displayport... They should have kept it separate.

skeechan
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They don't. T-Bolt will never be cheap. It will be niche just like Firewire. As the previous poster said, the broad market will never exist unless typical Pee Cee mainboards ship with T-Bolt and even then TB are competing with a 15 year old (or thereabouts) USB market. Obviously if people buy a USB 3 drive and they can use it with anything which is why I buy them.

T-Bolt, like displayport, was dead the moment it was released.

Octavean
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New York, NY

1 edit

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said by HiVolt:

said by Octavean:

To be clear, technically an Intel iGPU shouldn't be necessary for Thunderbolt support but it seems to be something Intel mandates anyway and Apple or any other company would likely have to comply.

Well a Mac Pro will certainly not have integrated graphics, but a PCI-E card... And how Apple handles that will be interesting... Some sort of custom video card with thunderbolt data IO as well as video output...

This is what I never liked about the connector that its shared with the displayport... They should have kept it separate.

That's my point,...

Near as I can tell, the Intel spec / and certification for Thunderbolt would require an Intel video subsystem be present.

When the PC market started to get Intel Thunderbolt support it was considered a high-end option for high-end products but the highest end platform for consumers that Intel offers, LGA2011 / X79 Sandy Bridge-E, never received such support. There was no reason for this unless it didn't meet the standards that Intel itself set.

Asus had an add-in board called ThunderboltEX which was supposed to add Thunderbolt support to what they considered Thunderbolt ready motherboards via a "TB_Header". It never came to market because it was denied certification likely for the way it allowed non-Intel video support over Thunderbolt or something similar. Asus was also going to bring Thunderbolt to its AMD line of motherboards using this add-in card.

What you're suggesting is technically possible but it wont happen unless Intel signs off on it and I don't think Intel will.

So basically something has to give.

A new Mac Pro, if one ever comes, might not have Thunderbolt support. If it does it will likely have an Intel iGPU built into the CPU. That's not to say a GPU add-in card wouldn't work but it would have to integrated in a way that Intel would certify. I believe there are examples of this in the wild now with lucidlogix virtu software on the PC platform.

Or we could just put it this way, what Mac now has Intel Thunderbolt but no Intel video subsystem built in,.....?

I believe the answer to that is "not a single one".

That's not to say it will never happen but it hasn't happened so far. This gives us reason to think it might not happen any time soon,...

***edit***

Links to the Asus ThunderboltEX add-in card that never made it to market:

»www.pcper.com/news/Mothe ··· erboards

»www.youtube.com/watch?v= ··· M7sRizvw


It was supposed to launch with Intel Ivy Bridge.
kitsune
join:2001-11-26
Sacramento, CA

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said by skeechan:

Better off with USB3. T-Bolt is largely worthless given it doesn't even support networking. Hell, firewire supports networking.

You realize T-Bolt is just an extension of the PCI bus right? Anything you can put into a PCI slot you can use with T-Bolt including a NIC card.
Kearnstd
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External Tbolt graphics card enclosures are technically possible too.

I think the issue with it not becoming more common has been hit squarely on the head here though.

Limited deployment on the Windows and Linux side of things. And the fact that USB3.0 can run all the USB stuff people have. As such you can run the latest USB gadget off a USB3.0 port or that old MS laser mouse. which makes the port far more popular as a standard thing to have already installed.

Octavean
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Octavean

MVM

said by Kearnstd:

External Tbolt graphics card enclosures are technically possible too.

I think this is a little more then just at the concept stage:

»blog.laptopmag.com/thund ··· ming-rig

»www.extremetech.com/comp ··· you-away

»www.newegg.com/Product/P ··· 34981056

»www.sonnettech.com/produ ··· sis.html

The Geezer
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join:2004-12-28
43.3Á

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I am about to get a 27" iMac (no FireWire ports) and I have five FireWire drives that I use for various purposes.

What I intend to do is get one or two Thunderbolt/FireWire adaptors and keep using the same drives.

I am sure there must be others doing the same thing, so I am wondering if this setup works OK.

skeechan
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No you can't. There is no networking support in T-Bolt. If you use an expansion interface, you are using whatever device you are sticking in the expansion interface and are limited by the speeds provided by that device (like a Gigabit NIC) making T-Bolt even more worthless. This compared to firewire which had native TCP IP support...you could directly network 2 machines using just a firewire cable. This is not possible with T-Bolt.
kitsune
join:2001-11-26
Sacramento, CA

kitsune

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Actually if you directly connect two macs with a t-bolt cable you can boot one of them to target disk mode just like firewire.

Found in the help menu of my 10.8 machine:
»support.apple.com/kb/PH10725

Firewire connected to the pci bus. t-bolt IS the pci bus.

skeechan
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skeechan

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That isn't networking. That merely makes the remote machine into a T-Bolt external HDD and the remote machine can't be booted to its OS while running in target disk mode. You can not network over T-Bolt like you can FW.
skeechan

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And since you can never have too much space the 4TB WD USB 3 external is $150 at Amazon right now. I have one and just picked up another. I can't even get the shiny box and styrofoam a T-Bolt drive comes in for $150.
rugby
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Wow, you certainly have some hardcore butt hurt going on about this interface. It's a million times more flexible than Firewire ever dreamed of being, and yet because it doesn't directly network you think it's worthless?

Look at what IS possible with Thunderbolt vs. FW/USB and then come back and have an adult discussion about this. Whining about 1-2 things that aren't directly possible (but ARE with inexpensive adapters) isn't productive.

Oh, and I've actually installed a 10Gbe networking environment where the customer will edit HD video LIVE across the network and they can use an iMac with a Thunderbolt to 10Gbe adapter to connect. Cheap? No. Does it work? Yes. Compared that to what it would have taken even 2-3 years ago to accomplish the feat and you can really see the value in Thunderbolt.

skeechan
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skeechan

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No guy, it is wallet hurt. It is WAY expensive for what it does and if you are editing HD video LIVE across a network you aren't doing it on a machine that has T-Bolt. If you are using a Mac, it will be a Mac Pro which doesn't have T-Bolt but has an array of other 10Ge options which are cheaper. Meanwhile you can't network over T-Bolt. You need a breakout box PLUS whatever you put into the box and then you are only on par with existing 10Gig goodies. You are better off doing it right the first time. I noticed that when you installed the 10Ge stuff, it WASN'T an iMac...why? Because that would be stupid.

You can try and defend this platform specific failure, but it is indefensible.

What "IS" possible? Pigs flying is possible. How about make it possible AND cost competitive, THEN we'll have that adult discussion. Until then you are simply pointing out great ways to set money on fire.