No. The cables are fine. I can buy them at any Apple Store. I am bitching that I have nothing to plug them into because the cost of both the cables and the interfaces make Thunderbolt a niche market. Try buying an empty Thunderbolt drive enclosure for example. How about one of those devices that let you drop in 3.5 or 2.5 inch drives? What is available is vastly over priced due to the niche size of the market. The Chinese can't be bothered to make anything in volume for low prices because their margins are razor thin so they make USB 3.0 devices instead. Thunderbolt is a failed interface standard even more so than Firewire before it.
it sucks that you have a decent argument and everyone is so busy being snarky instead of just having a simple discussion. :-(
Forget the audio cable, I just wanted to describe in detail my setup. It requires a single TB port to work.
You've only got one particular Thunderbolt device, the Apple monitor. I don't understand why your personal setup is relevant to this at all.
<span style="line-height:1.4em;">So, what's your point with not having multiple TB ports? Not possible to daisy-chain your microwave and the bath </span>
tub? Thunderbolt targets specific performance requirements, it is not intended to replace the USB.
It's intended to replace FireWire. However, FireWire 1) wasn't as crazy expensive, 2) didn't have as many single-port devices, and 3) supported hubs to work around any single-port devices you did manage to find.
<span style="line-height:1.4em;">What exactly is the point you're trying to make? That Thunderbolt isn't as inexpensive as you think it should be or that TB wasn't engineered the way you think it should've been?
It's also been marketed exceptionally badly. Being Apple-exclusive for a whole year was something that never should have happened, as it has virtually guaranteed that TB will be relegated to an even smaller niche than FireWire was. It should have been put on Intel's standard motherboards, and Intel should have made the first generation of controllers cheaper in order to drive adoption, even if they had to take a slight loss on the lower controllers. They definitely shouldn't have charged high licensing fees (didn't anyone learn anything from FireWire?). If the technology had reached a wider audience, the price would have gone down as well due to economies of scale. As it is, we're what, three years in with Thunderbolt? And adoption is still pathetically low.
As for how it's engineered; if you're going to make it necessary for tons of devices to have only one port, and if you're going to take over the display port, you'd better make it possible to have hubs. FireWire did; I don't know whether TB is technically incapable of adding hubs or whether no one just bothers, but this is a big problem.
(If so, please do share with us your alternative design that would meet the same performance and functionality goals.) </span>
Frank777 linked to PCIe OCuLink, a technology that claims to be able to run PCIe to external devices without requiring expensive controller chips in the cabling, which should, at the very least, create cheaper devices. Plus, it probably won't eat the display port.
That the less expensive TB controller has lesser feature set? <span style="line-height:1.4em;">That some accessory manufacturers aren't using all of Thunderbolt's features or functionality?</span>
We were promised the ability to daisy-chain TB devices, with the display being the end point. Then, when that proved infeasible because of the high price point that TB requires, Intel went and released a single-port controller for making TB endpoint devices, which mucked up the whole design.
"Most" TB devices don't permanently block you from connecting a DisplayPort display. As a matter of fact, I just listed 12 that don't to your 6 that do.
Congratulations, you found a FireWire hard disk enclosure with only one port on it. That must have taken you forever. In the 64 results that come up when you search for "FireWire enclosure" on NewEgg (after you filter out the results that aren't enclosures or don't actually have FireWire on them), there's exactly one that doesn't have two ports on it, and it's that one. There's also one by Mediasonic that doesn't seem to be sold anymore by the manufacturer, and which I can't find any information on. It probably has two ports too, since most all FireWire enclosures do, but even if I grant you that one, that'd be 2 out of 64.
As you can see, the exception proves the rule.
And again, even if you had the gross misfortune to have picked up the one single crappiest FireWire enclosure on the planet, you'd still have been able to work around that because FireWire allows hubs.
You're making claims, but you're not backing them up. In fact, you're being given factual information to refute your claims.
Such as...?
You're either ignorant, or you're deliberately being obtuse - or maybe a simple google search too esoteric for you?
Again with the personal attacks, the surefire indicator of a weak argument.
Want a storage enclosure with 2 Thunderbolt ports, then here you go:
Is that a single-bay enclosure? Nope. (it's a 4x, designed for setting up a RAID)
bunch of other things that aren't single-bay enclosures like I asked for
So the result is: You were unable to find a simple, single-bay drive enclosure with two ports on it. Well, I suppose you could always get a freaking PCIe enclosure, then put an eSATA card or something in that and lug the whole works around with you, just to hook up a single hard drive. Sounds fun.
They are not priced out of the market, as I said immediately in reply to this post, long ago. They are priced out of YOUR market.
Not this crap again. How well has Thunderbolt been selling? How much market penetration has it reached? The answer to each is not good. The price has a huge amount to do with that, and nothing of it has anything at all to do with me personally.
Nor do I care. I do know, however, that they do not include Thunderbolt, and therefore any comment on your part regarding it is merely ‘uninterested bystander’ levels of engagement.
it sucks that you have a decent argument and everyone is so busy being snarky instead of just having a simple discussion. :-(
It's AppleInsider, a.k.a. iNorthKorea. You're not allowed to question anything that comes out of Apple, even if it doesn't actually come out of Apple at all (TB is an Intel technology, not an Apple one).
If these guys and this site were around in the 90s, they'd probably be jumping down your throat for not defending the Pippin.
No. The cables are fine. I can buy them at any Apple Store. I am bitching that I have nothing to plug them into because the cost of both the cables and the interfaces make Thunderbolt a niche market. Try buying an empty Thunderbolt drive enclosure for example. How about one of those devices that let you drop in 3.5 or 2.5 inch drives? What is available is vastly over priced due to the niche size of the market. The Chinese can't be bothered to make anything in volume for low prices because their margins are razor thin so they make USB 3.0 devices instead. Thunderbolt is a failed interface standard even more so than Firewire before it.
Well, Thunderbolt is better performance than USB, so due to the better and more expensive technology, there aren't as many choices, but there are still a variety of products available. I bought a Drobo Mini where I can use SSD and/or HDDs and can upgrade easily to the next level if what I'm using isn't enough space. So for certain needs this box wasn't that expensive. There are others out there, but if you are just comparing USB enclosures to Thunderbolt enclosures and comparing price, that's not the way to go.
Not many people usually drop 3.5 or 2.5 inch drives in the same box. That's not really what you should be looking at. The smaller drive sizes are more for laptops. If you want the more reliable HDD's, then you go for the more expensive drives that would be used in an Enterprise Data Center and for that crowd, you can get NetStore, Promise, etc. Drobo has a few products that are decent I would look into. But Thunderbolt is more for the more serious minded professional and they typically don't buy based solely on price. That's a big mistake people tend to do.
I wouldn't look at a box by wanting to put 2.5 and 3.5 inch drives in the same box.. you would generally have to put the 2.5 inch drives in a cage that will fit in a 3.5 inch cage. Then you have to pay for that different cage.
I would go to this site to see what's on the market and check periodically because they are updating it as new products get to market.
But for the price conscious people, Thunderbolt isn't your answer, but if performance and reliability is, then Thunderbolt may be the ONLY answer. At least for the present future for desktop systems. USB really isn't meant for storage, even though people use it. I wouldn't even consider USB for any serious storage device.
USB was originally meant more for keyboards, mice, trackpads, direct connected printers. large data transfers clogs up the USB bus very easily. I even hate using USB for my DAC, but that's what's commonly used when using a Computer as source for a stereo system. If I could get a Thunderbolt DAC for my home stereo, I would have preferred that instead.
Bottom line, storage issues should be based more on performance, reliability FIRST, then convince, and price should be the last on the list. You definitely get what you pay for. USB is more for Flash drives and little convince type devices where it's more small data transfers. Anything more than that, it's Thunderbolt all the way. I compared USB 3 and Thunderbolt 1 on the same device and Thunderbolt kicked USB 3's ass, it wasn't even a contest. The device I have does both, but I prefer Thunderbolt.
Sorry, no, describing what you are is not a personal attack. Ignorance is not an insult. It’s a challenge.
How well has Thunderbolt been selling? How much market penetration has it reached?
Pretty well. Quite a bit.
You continue to fail to comprehend the market for Thunderbolt. Until you stop failing, you’ll never understand. This is ignorance on your part. Your challenge now is to stop being ignorant.
Okay, not going to feed this troll any more.
Yes, someone who explicitly responds to exactly what you say is a “troll”.
USB was originally meant more for keyboards, mice, trackpads, direct connected printers. large data transfers clogs up the USB bus very easily.
...
USB is more for Flash drives and little convince type devices where it's more small data transfers. Anything more than that, it's Thunderbolt all the way. I compared USB 3 and Thunderbolt 1 on the same device and Thunderbolt kicked USB 3's ass, it wasn't even a contest. The device I have does both, but I prefer Thunderbolt.
Did your USB 3 enclosure support UASP? A lot of the clogging-up issues that USB had were caused by the crappy BOT protocol it was stuck with for a long time. UASP solves most of the issues that BOT had, and can do things like send commands and data in parallel in order to keep things moving more smoothly. You can see some information about that here:
Of course it's not going to be as fast as Thunderbolt, but in my testing, it's surprisingly fast (I've got an SSD that is performing noticeably better in a UASP enclosure than it did in the 3.0 Gbps SATA port of the laptop it used to be in), and it's faster than most actual devices you would put into the enclosure. And, needless to say, it's a lot easier to find.
But for the price conscious people, Thunderbolt isn't your answer, but if performance and reliability is, then Thunderbolt may be the ONLY answer. At least for the present future for desktop systems. USB really isn't meant for storage, even though people use it. I wouldn't even consider USB for any serious storage device.
Again it is not so much the price that concerns me. It is the lack of selection. The best Thunderbolt enclosures on the market are made by LaCie but they don't offer their really sweet Little Big Disk enclosure without drives nor will they according to their representative I spoke to two weeks ago at a trade show. I pointed out that there are people on eBay that buy their least expensive model with hard drives and then outfit it with two 1 TB flash drives which is a configuration LaCie does not even offer and would probably charge more for if they did. It turned out that he had not even been aware of that before someone else at the show told him earlier the same day. This should give you some idea just how small the market for Thunderbolt drives really is.
BTW, I eyed that Drobo enclosure with 4 2.5 inch drive slots. That looks like the best choice currently but it does not have Thunderbolt 2 yet like that nice black high end LaCie 1TB drive but at least you can fill it up however you want.
PS I am not interested in 2.5 and 3 inch drives in the same box. I just failed to write the message clearly enough. I meant either not both together.
Again it is not so much the price that concerns me. It is the lack of selection. The best Thunderbolt enclosures on the market are made by LaCie but they don't offer their really sweet Little Big Disk enclosure without drives nor will they according to their representative I spoke to two weeks ago at a trade show. I pointed out that there are people on eBay that buy their least expensive model with hard drives and then outfit it with two 1 TB flash drives which is a configuration LaCie does not even offer and would probably charge more for if they did. It turned out that he had not even been aware of that before someone else at the show told him earlier the same day. This should give you some idea just how small the market for Thunderbolt drives really is.
BTW, I eyed that Drobo enclosure with 4 2.5 inch drive slots. That looks like the best choice currently but it does not have Thunderbolt 2 yet like that nice black high end LaCie 1TB drive but at least you can fill it up however you want.
PS I am not interested in 2.5 and 3 inch drives in the same box. I just failed to write the message clearly enough. I meant either not both together.
The LaCie LBD had some limitations, I was looking at that as well. The larger Drobo are cool because they have battery backup and other features, but they are a little pricey. I got the Drobo mini, while it has some limitations, for my needs, it does just fine. I use it as a SSD RAID for backups. But you can stick the smaller laptop drives in it, plus add a SSD drive on the bottom to make it perform similar to the Fusion drive concept. It's not that expensive of an enclosure, it's got two small fans and is quiet. The LaCie from my knowledge is a lot louder. Some people don't mind loud fans, but i do.
I guess you really have to look at your needs and go through what's on the market. As with any new technology, it takes time for products to surface, just ANY technology, but since TB can replace Firewire, USB, Fiber Channel, etc. it's just the best bet for larger storage requirements. But check out NetStor, Promise, Drobo, OWC. They have products you can buy your own drives. Just be VERY careful before you start buying drives, some products simply don't work with certain enclosures, so you have to be REAL careful as to what brand/model drives you buy.
If I was to do this all over again, I would have probably buy the bigger Drobo box, but I just simply couldn't afford it. I like the mini because it's small, I use SSD in RAID, it's quiet, affordable, comes with both Thunderbolt and USB 3 (just in case), and it comes with cables, so there isn't added cost of cables. but it won't work with certain brands/models of SSDs, and I can't make it a boot up drive, at least not yet.
Oh, OK. Yeah, I was a little shocked that someone would mix drives like that. Don't worry. We all make mistakes typing things.
Did your USB 3 enclosure support UASP? A lot of the clogging-up issues that USB had were caused by the crappy BOT protocol it was stuck with for a long time. UASP solves most of the issues that BOT had, and can do things like send commands and data in parallel in order to keep things moving more smoothly. You can see some information about that here:
Of course it's not going to be as fast as Thunderbolt, but in my testing, it's surprisingly fast (I've got an SSD that is performing noticeably better in a UASP enclosure than it did in the 3.0 Gbps SATA port of the laptop it used to be in), and it's faster than most actual devices you would put into the enclosure. And, needless to say, it's a lot easier to find.
I have a USB DAC, and EVERY SINGLE time I've read about using a USB DAC, they say NOT to have a USB drive on the same bus. This isn't an enclosure issue, this is an issue that USB SUCKS, it's not a good I/O for having multiple devices on the same bus that move lots of data in any one direction.
As far as my USB 3/Thunderbolt RAID box, it doesn't say whether it is or it isn't UASP. Maybe that's another problem with USB. Lack of consistency.
I just don't think USB is meant for serious data transfers. It's meant more of small data transfers. I'm just not going to use it anymore. I've had more USB external drives crap out, give me problems on way or form and i'm sick of it. USB SUCKS for storage.
I have a USB DAC, and EVERY SINGLE time I've read about using a USB DAC, they say NOT to have a USB drive on the same bus. This isn't an enclosure issue, this is an issue that USB SUCKS, it's not a good I/O for having multiple devices on the same bus that move lots of data in any one direction.
They often said the same thing for FireWire as well. If you had a FireWire audio interface, you were supposed to put your disks on a different FW bus, by adding one via ExpressCard (back when they used to let us do that). It's probably not a good idea to put a bunch of other stuff on any bus that you're using DAC equipment on.
With that said, if your DAC is USB 2.0, I think that actually is on a separate bus from your USB 3.0 stuff, since USB 3.0 uses different pins on the connector and everything (at least, they show up as separate busses in System Profiler).
As far as my USB 3/Thunderbolt RAID box, it doesn't say whether it is or it isn't UASP. Maybe that's another problem with USB. Lack of consistency.
If it's not advertised as UASP, it probably isn't, since UASP is still fairly new and not ubiquitous yet (although it seems to be getting there; a lot of the newer USB 3.0 chipsets support UASP). You can check by cracking open the case and having a look at the bridge chip to see what model it is (the most popular UASP-compatible chipset is the ASMedia ASM1053, although there are others, including the Oxford OXU3100 which OWC uses). Note that you might need a magnifying glass to read the model number on the chip; it can be pretty tiny sometimes.
The other thing you can do is do a clean boot with no devices attached, make sure the IOUSBAttachedSCSI kext isn't loaded, then connect your drive and see if the kext gets loaded. If it does, you've got UASP. If it doesn't, then the drive probably doesn't support UASP, although it could still be something else like the chipset on your computer's motherboard itself being too old to support UASP.
While I'll admit that not knowing if your drive supports UASP can be frustrating, I'm glad we don't have "consistency" here, because if we did, everything would be stuck with that horrible old BOT protocol, which really does suck.
They often said the same thing for FireWire as well. If you had a FireWire audio interface, you were supposed to put your disks on a different FW bus, by adding one via ExpressCard (back when they used to let us do that). It's probably not a good idea to put a bunch of other stuff on any bus that you're using DAC equipment on.
With that said, if your DAC is USB 2.0, I think that actually is on a separate bus from your USB 3.0 stuff, since USB 3.0 uses different pins on the connector and everything (at least, they show up as separate busses in System Profiler).
If it's not advertised as UASP, it probably isn't, since UASP is still fairly new and not ubiquitous yet (although it seems to be getting there; a lot of the newer USB 3.0 chipsets support UASP). You can check by cracking open the case and having a look at the bridge chip to see what model it is (the most popular UASP-compatible chipset is the ASMedia ASM1053, although there are others, including the Oxford OXU3100 which OWC uses). Note that you might need a magnifying glass to read the model number on the chip; it can be pretty tiny sometimes.
The other thing you can do is do a clean boot with no devices attached, make sure the IOUSBAttachedSCSI kext isn't loaded, then connect your drive and see if the kext gets loaded. If it does, you've got UASP. If it doesn't, then the drive probably doesn't support UASP, although it could still be something else like the chipset on your computer's motherboard itself being too old to support UASP.
While I'll admit that not knowing if your drive supports UASP can be frustrating, I'm glad we don't have "consistency" here, because if we did, everything would be stuck with that horrible old BOT protocol, which really does suck.
When it comes to DAC converters for 2 channel stereo, there isn't any Firewire based solutions. For the Professional Audio recording industry, there are, but as you can plainly see, that's one of the many reasons why Apple wanted what we now call Thunderbolt. Apple was working on a faster and better implementation of Firewire as they were working on Firewire 1600 and beyond, but decided to forgo Firewire and have Intel create Thunderbolt. MADI was created for the higher track count A/D and D/A for the Professional Audio recording industry, but they are moving away from that and over to Thunderbolt. I think right now, there are three or four major players in the A/D and D/A industry that are moving away from Firewire, MADI, over to Thunderbolt. But for DACs for our home stereo, they usually connect via USB, some will connect with other means, but USB 2.0 is by tar the most popular. For 2 channel you don't really need much more than USB 2.0, but the issue is sharing with a disk drive, it's just going to cause problems. like I said, if there was a Thunderbolt DAC, then I would certain do that, but there isn't. So, whatever is going on with USB storage, I'm not interested and I should have to see if something is UASP or not, if it's part of the standard, then everything should be complaint if it's got a USB 3.0 port.
Case closed. Thunderbolt is vastly superior for large data transfer in both directions, daisy chain able, etc. and that's why more of the high track count A/D and D/A are moving towards Thunderbolt.
What's part of the issue is there are already high end customers that have a tremendous amount of investment in their existing equipment whether it's Firewire based, MADI based, Fibre Channel, etc, and as time goes on, these customers will be changing over to Thunderbolt whenever they can because it's the next wave in I/O, that's why there was a lot of pressure to get the new MacPros out because that was Apple's first implementation of Thunderbolt (and TB2) for the MacPro. So, anyone that looks at sales as an indicator, should realize that some have been implementing Thunderbolt based products mostly on laptops and iMacs and since the MacPros just came out within the last couple of months, that has gained momentum until they start replacing their computers with the MacPro, or other PC based Thunderbolt 1/2 motherboards. Plus, the mfg of Thunderbolt products are still coming out with more and more products to serve mostly the audio recording industry, video production industry and mass storage that's directly connected. So for connecting directly to the computer, Thunderbolt is the emerging standard. USB 3.1 is almost as good as Thunderbolt 1, but Thunderbolt 1 is moving towards Thunderbolt 2, so I guess the best thing to say is Thunderbolt is WAY ahead of USB and will most likely continue to be that way in terms of serving the higher end needs of data transfer and other specialized products. And as we speak there is no USB 3.1 anything on the market so that spec is premature and nothing is available.
I STILL don't know why people want to hang on to the notion of USB for data storage for anything other than maybe USB sticks when there's Thunderbolt. I think it's ridiculous to compare the two and to even think that Thunderbolt is going away because it isn't. It's got a lot more growth as Intel said that it will eventually go to 100GB in either direction, which will take some time, but I don't see USB ever moving that far.
I think as Apple moves all of their products to Thunderbolt 2, we'll see more products on the market serving the lower end needs to the higher end needs, it's just a matter of getting the computers on the market and then people having these needs as the size of their data grows.
Also, what's you involvement in USB? Do you work for an organization that promotes USB? Do you have a vested interest in USB? I'm trying to figure out why someone wants to compare USB to Thunderbolt. I don't have any vested interest in either. I just hate USB for storage based on past experience. :-)
I forgot to mention, in the world of A/D conversion for the higher end audio recording industry, USB has too much latency, which is what they want to avoid at all costs, which is why they leaned towards MADI, but I think more and more will eventually move to Thunderbolt because it's built in rather than buying MADI card for a few hundred dollars and requiring a slot. Same rules applies toward Fibre Channel. Thunderbolt kind of removes that.
40GB? And it still won't unseat the king of PC-land: USB 3!
This one could if the USB 3 mode means that they can get rid of USB 3 ports. Thunderbolt ports are smaller in width by half. If they can simply sell a Thunderbolt 3 to USB 3 cable, they can switch from 2x TB + 2x USB 3 to 4x TB. This not only means 4 displays on a laptop but 4 USB ports for laptop users with no displays attached. USB pens won't fit and mice with micro-adaptors but there are few other devices where a TB to USB cable would be a problem. They can leave one USB port for convenience.
The reduced power of the TB components itself will help but the added power opens up the possibility of larger portable RAID, larger portable bus-powered displays and as mentioned, the ability to power an entire laptop using a single cable from a TB display. It may even be possible for one display to power a laptop over 1 port and a 2nd display over another, using only one wall plug. That might require too large an internal PSU in the display but the iMac has over 300W PSU so it's possible.
If they want to make a 4K TB display, this would be a good thing to wait for as it means a single laptop can drive dual 4K displays over one port and be powered over the same cable.
The plug change is not important when the processors are in the plug. They can have plugs like they had with FW with 800 on one end and 400 on the other.
Cheaper cables would be nice. Even at $29, buying one per port for 4 ports comes out pricey. Under $10 is probably unlikely but somewhere in the middle. If they currently have 40% margins, they can do $19 and still make some profit.
Could it be possible that the new TB connector type be a lightning connector. The use of display port for the first iteration of TB would have assisted adoption rather than create the need for further port, but now almost all mobile idevices have a lightning port. Lightning has ten pins (two hidden on the sides) and so if another row of pins in the female connector were added, it could be utilised for thunderbolt connections. The 100 W power seems too similar to new USB C connector specs to be a coincidence. The ~ 3 mm connector size could be reference to a lightning female connector. Would make sense and in keeping with the desire to minimise the number of connectors. A lightning connector with thunderbolt protocols could eliminate the need for power, HDMI, ethernet, USB and audio inputs/ouputs on mobile macs. This unified approach could lead to lightning being the only connector needed. The new apple TV or ipanel with a single lightning input, just like an iPad on steroids, with all the input and output in one cable. Maybe more inputs to keep the masses happy in the power plug, but in time wean everyone from the idea of a single connector for a single protocol. And when bandwidth and larger market adoption drives cable prices down, lightning connector could have optical input at end of tip added, and perhaps Apple's funky use of magnets could align the sapphire iris correctly, leaving the copper pins to transport the power. Just an idea. But would make sense if the ethos of apple's design is to simplify everything and make it all easier for the user. The high price of the cable is then to accommodate for the chips that tell that cable what it is connected to and how it is to act (i.e., power supply, data pipe, A/V out at end of daisy chain etc). Just a thought.
That would be one thing if TB didn't double as the display port, or if TB supported a star topology. But as it is, connecting most TB devices permanently blocks you from ever connecting a display (barring Apple's incredibly outdated and expensive one) without throwing away your incredibly expensive TB device. The single chipset reduces the cost, but not nearly by enough.
No it doesn't. The cal digit (and other) TB docks support HDMI 1.4 out. Which means if you're dumb enough to buy single port TB drive bays for a single TB port Mac you can still run a display and your TB device.
At a minimum you can support a 1080p monitor. It should also support a HDMI 1.3 compliant 2560x1600 monitor but my dell doesn't support HDMI at that rez without driver tweaking and I haven't bothered since I use mDP.
When it comes to DAC converters for 2 channel stereo, there isn't any Firewire based solutions.
What? There are plenty of FireWire-based DAC solutions out there. I used to work with one of them way back in my undergraduate days, when I worked in my university's AV lab. Given that that was about a decade ago, the model we were using surely isn't available anymore, but a simple Google search will still turn up plenty of FireWire DAC units. For example: http://thewelltemperedcomputer.com/HW/Firewire.htm
For the Professional Audio recording industry, there are, but as you can plainly see, that's one of the many reasons why Apple wanted what we now call Thunderbolt. Apple was working on a faster and better implementation of Firewire as they were working on Firewire 1600 and beyond, but decided to forgo Firewire and have Intel create Thunderbolt.
They sure did!
(sigh)
MADI was created for the higher track count A/D and D/A for the Professional Audio recording industry, but they are moving away from that and over to Thunderbolt. I think right now, there are three or four major players in the A/D and D/A industry that are moving away from Firewire, MADI, over to Thunderbolt. But for DACs for our home stereo, they usually connect via USB, some will connect with other means, but USB 2.0 is by tar the most popular. For 2 channel you don't really need much more than USB 2.0, but the issue is sharing with a disk drive, it's just going to cause problems.
And that's a legit reason to not use USB storage, just like if you were using a FW-based DAC, it'd be a legit reason not to use FW storage. Busses aren't magic, and even with the modern 5/10 Gbps busses, modern SSDs are fast enough to use a decent chunk of that.
like I said, if there was a Thunderbolt DAC, then I would certain do that, but there isn't. So, whatever is going on with USB storage, I'm not interested and I should have to see if something is UASP or not, if it's part of the standard, then everything should be complaint if it's got a USB 3.0 port.
Case closed. Thunderbolt is vastly superior for large data transfer in both directions, daisy chain able, etc. and that's why more of the high track count A/D and D/A are moving towards Thunderbolt.
Mostly because FireWire isn't being developed anymore and there's no real replacement for it.
What's part of the issue is there are already high end customers that have a tremendous amount of investment in their existing equipment whether it's Firewire based, MADI based, Fibre Channel, etc, and as time goes on, these customers will be changing over to Thunderbolt whenever they can because it's the next wave in I/O, that's why there was a lot of pressure to get the new MacPros out because that was Apple's first implementation of Thunderbolt (and TB2) for the MacPro. So, anyone that looks at sales as an indicator, should realize that some have been implementing Thunderbolt based products mostly on laptops and iMacs and since the MacPros just came out within the last couple of months, that has gained momentum until they start replacing their computers with the MacPro, or other PC based Thunderbolt 1/2 motherboards. Plus, the mfg of Thunderbolt products are still coming out with more and more products to serve mostly the audio recording industry, video production industry and mass storage that's directly connected. So for connecting directly to the computer, Thunderbolt is the emerging standard. USB 3.1 is almost as good as Thunderbolt 1, but Thunderbolt 1 is moving towards Thunderbolt 2, so I guess the best thing to say is Thunderbolt is WAY ahead of USB and will most likely continue to be that way in terms of serving the higher end needs of data transfer and other specialized products. And as we speak there is no USB 3.1 anything on the market so that spec is premature and nothing is available.
The trouble is, the "higher end needs of data transfer and other specialized products" is a tiny niche. When TB was announced, they were promising so much more than that. Look at all those docks available for TB. It clearly wants to be a consumer product, but it will never make it there, because the way it's designed makes it inherently expensive (like the chips in the cables). And without consumer support, it becomes very difficult for computer manufacturers to justify the added cost to put TB on the motherboard, because it just doesn't generate the sales to make it worthwhile. So while I'm sure it'll stay on the Mac Pro for some time, for the majority of Apple's lineup, I wouldn't get too attached to always having the Thunderbolt port there, when 99.99% of users have no idea what it even is.
I STILL don't know why people want to hang on to the notion of USB for data storage for anything other than maybe USB sticks when there's Thunderbolt.
This isn't hard to figure out. You can get a USB enclosure, with UASP and everything, for under 20 bucks, whereas with Thunderbolt you'll be spending $200-$300 just for the enclosure. That's a whole order of magnitude of difference in price. And at the same time, USB 3.0 is faster than most storage devices you'd put into the enclosure, so the difference is minimal enough that unless you're making Avatar or something, you're unlikely to even notice the difference. So those extra hundreds of dollars are, most of the time, just wasted money. Which is why USB enclosures are as numerous as sands on the beach, whereas TB enclosures are such a niche that no one's even gotten around to making a single-bay one with two ports on it yet.
I think it's ridiculous to compare the two and to even think that Thunderbolt is going away because it isn't. It's got a lot more growth as Intel said that it will eventually go to 100GB in either direction, which will take some time, but I don't see USB ever moving that far.
Be careful; you may eat those words someday. People probably thought USB would never hit 5 Gbps (and soon, 10 Gbps) too. Way back in the day, there were people claiming USB 2.0 was never going to work.
I think as Apple moves all of their products to Thunderbolt 2, we'll see more products on the market serving the lower end needs to the higher end needs, it's just a matter of getting the computers on the market and then people having these needs as the size of their data grows.
Not with the costs that are built into the technology. I have severe doubts that TB can ever grow beyond the extremely high-end. I'd be delighted if I turn out to be wrong, but so far, we're three years in, and it still doesn't look that way.
Also, what's you involvement in USB? Do you work for an organization that promotes USB? Do you have a vested interest in USB? I'm trying to figure out why someone wants to compare USB to Thunderbolt. I don't have any vested interest in either. I just hate USB for storage based on past experience. :-)
Oh, come on, and you were being pretty civil up to this point. Don't tell me you're going to degenerate into ad hominems too. No, I don't have any "vested interest" in USB. I was actually a FireWire guy for a really long time... but then they stopped updating it. I'm in the process of replacing all my FW stuff with UASP, since its performance is surprisingly good and not at all lousy in the way that USB 2.0 was. Thunderbolt is not sufficiently better to justify the expense, particularly since there's no way of knowing if my next Mac will even still have TB ports on it. Apple giveth, and Apple taketh away. USB is here to stay, though.
No it doesn't. The cal digit (and other) TB docks support HDMI 1.4 out. Which means if you're dumb enough to buy single port TB drive bays for a single TB port Mac you can still run a display and your TB device.
At a minimum you can support a 1080p monitor. It should also support a HDMI 1.3 compliant 2560x1600 monitor but my dell doesn't support HDMI at that rez without driver tweaking and I haven't bothered since I use mDP.
(BTW, can you even figure out how many ports it has from looking at that website? I couldn't find it without downloading the PDF manual, which is the other problem with TB — you have to do research just to find out if you can use something and still have a monitor.)
There's a fan site for Thunderbolt at https://thunderbolttechnology.net/ . It lists Thunderbolt products, and has the handy feature of listing how many ports they have. Almost half of them have only one port.
What? There are plenty of FireWire-based DAC solutions out there. I used to work with one of them way back in my undergraduate days, when I worked in my university's AV lab. Given that that was about a decade ago, the model we were using surely isn't available anymore, but a simple Google search will still turn up plenty of FireWire DAC units. For example: http://thewelltemperedcomputer.com/HW/Firewire.htm
They sure did!
(sigh)
And that's a legit reason to not use USB storage, just like if you were using a FW-based DAC, it'd be a legit reason not to use FW storage. Busses aren't magic, and even with the modern 5/10 Gbps busses, modern SSDs are fast enough to use a decent chunk of that.
Mostly because FireWire isn't being developed anymore and there's no real replacement for it.
The trouble is, the "higher end needs of data transfer and other specialized products" is a tiny niche. When TB was announced, they were promising so much more than that. Look at all those docks available for TB. It clearly wants to be a consumer product, but it will never make it there, because the way it's designed makes it inherently expensive (like the chips in the cables). And without consumer support, it becomes very difficult for computer manufacturers to justify the added cost to put TB on the motherboard, because it just doesn't generate the sales to make it worthwhile. So while I'm sure it'll stay on the Mac Pro for some time, for the majority of Apple's lineup, I wouldn't get too attached to always having the Thunderbolt port there, when 99.99% of users have no idea what it even is.
This isn't hard to figure out. You can get a USB enclosure, with UASP and everything, for under 20 bucks, whereas with Thunderbolt you'll be spending $200-$300 just for the enclosure. That's a whole order of magnitude of difference in price. And at the same time, USB 3.0 is faster than most storage devices you'd put into the enclosure, so the difference is minimal enough that unless you're making Avatar or something, you're unlikely to even notice the difference. So those extra hundreds of dollars are, most of the time, just wasted money. Which is why USB enclosures are as numerous as sands on the beach, whereas TB enclosures are such a niche that no one's even gotten around to making a single-bay one with two ports on it yet.
Be careful; you may eat those words someday. People probably thought USB would never hit 5 Gbps (and soon, 10 Gbps) too. Way back in the day, there were people claiming USB 2.0 was never going to work.
Not with the costs that are built into the technology. I have severe doubts that TB can ever grow beyond the extremely high-end. I'd be delighted if I turn out to be wrong, but so far, we're three years in, and it still doesn't look that way.
Oh, come on, and you were being pretty civil up to this point. Don't tell me you're going to degenerate into ad hominems too. No, I don't have any "vested interest" in USB. I was actually a FireWire guy for a really long time... but then they stopped updating it. I'm in the process of replacing all my FW stuff with UASP, since its performance is surprisingly good and not at all lousy in the way that USB 2.0 was. Thunderbolt is not sufficiently better to justify the expense, particularly since there's no way of knowing if my next Mac will even still have TB ports on it. Apple giveth, and Apple taketh away. USB is here to stay, though.
I know USB is here to stay for the home audio computer crowd. Firewire DACs for home audio systems? NOPE. There's a couple but it's not the most popular for the home audio crowd. You have a link that shows about 8 products. For USB there are literally HUNDREDS. The list grows every freaking day. If I listed them all, by the time I finished there would probably another 20 added in the time frame I wrote the list. USB for home audio 2 channel is what's the most popular right now. The only Firewire ones you listed are used more for Pro Audio crowd, NOT the home audio 2 channel crowd.
There are only a small handful of companies that STILL have Firewire, but it's NOT a trend anymore, it's a dead market. For the PRO Market that has the HIGH TRACK count, you have Avid, Apogee, Aurora, Universal Audio so far and I think a few more will be adding to the list. I think you are looking at more prosumer converters for doing computer based recording where you aren't tracking lots of instruments at the same time.
But If you want me to list all of the companies that make 2 channel DACs for home audio crowd? Go look at a Stereophile Buyer's guide and they probably only have 1/2 of what's REALLY on the market and they probably have HUNDREDS of models listed. You seem to not be looking at the home audio industry, that link you showed only has older products that are not really what home audio people have and are buying. I'm talking about the TRENDS for NEW products and existing products that companies make and people are still buying for the HOME. I think you are confused when I discuss USB DACs. I though I made myself clear. But I will say it again. USB DACs for the HOME is what is on the market and that's the trend, UNFORTUNATELY. For the HIGH END multi-track count AD/DA converters that's a growing market and they are going away from USB and Firewire and moving to Thunderbolt because they want to go up to 64 channels. MADI is out there, but Thunderbolt is catching up with TB 2. We'll probably see some TB 2 announcements in that area.
I know USB is here to stay for the home audio computer crowd. Firewire DACs for home audio systems? NOPE. There's a couple but it's not the most popular for the home audio crowd. You have a link that shows about 8 products. For USB there are literally HUNDREDS. The list grows every freaking day. If I listed them all, by the time I finished there would probably another 20 added in the time frame I wrote the list. USB for home audio 2 channel is what's the most popular right now. The only Firewire ones you listed are used more for Pro Audio crowd, NOT the home audio 2 channel crowd.
Well of course there are a lot more USB devices, for the same reason there are a lot more USB devices for everything. USB is cheaper, it is consumer-friendly, it is good enough for the vast majority of people, and it is everywhere.
There are only a small handful of companies that STILL have Firewire, but it's NOT a trend anymore, it's a dead market. For the PRO Market that has the HIGH TRACK count, you have Avid, Apogee, Aurora, Universal Audio so far and I think a few more will be adding to the list. I think you are looking at more prosumer converters for doing computer based recording where you aren't tracking lots of instruments at the same time.
Of course it's not a trend anymore. They stopped freaking updating the thing. Which is a shame, really, because FireWire was a great technology. It was just exceptionally poorly marketed. If they'd played their cards right with it back in the 90s, FW could have been what USB is now.
(sigh)
But If you want me to list all of the companies that make 2 channel DACs for home audio crowd? Go look at a Stereophile Buyer's guide and they probably only have 1/2 of what's REALLY on the market and they probably have HUNDREDS of models listed. You seem to not be looking at the home audio industry, that link you showed only has older products that are not really what home audio people have and are buying. I'm talking about the TRENDS for NEW products and existing products that companies make and people are still buying for the HOME. I think you are confused when I discuss USB DACs. I though I made myself clear. But I will say it again. USB DACs for the HOME is what is on the market and that's the trend, UNFORTUNATELY.
What? There are plenty of FireWire-based DAC solutions out there. I used to work with one of them way back in my undergraduate days, when I worked in my university's AV lab. Given that that was about a decade ago, the model we were using surely isn't available anymore, but a simple Google search will still turn up plenty of FireWire DAC units. For example: http://thewelltemperedcomputer.com/HW/Firewire.htm
They sure did!
(sigh)
And that's a legit reason to not use USB storage, just like if you were using a FW-based DAC, it'd be a legit reason not to use FW storage. Busses aren't magic, and even with the modern 5/10 Gbps busses, modern SSDs are fast enough to use a decent chunk of that.
Mostly because FireWire isn't being developed anymore and there's no real replacement for it.
The trouble is, the "higher end needs of data transfer and other specialized products" is a tiny niche. When TB was announced, they were promising so much more than that. Look at all those docks available for TB. It clearly wants to be a consumer product, but it will never make it there, because the way it's designed makes it inherently expensive (like the chips in the cables). And without consumer support, it becomes very difficult for computer manufacturers to justify the added cost to put TB on the motherboard, because it just doesn't generate the sales to make it worthwhile. So while I'm sure it'll stay on the Mac Pro for some time, for the majority of Apple's lineup, I wouldn't get too attached to always having the Thunderbolt port there, when 99.99% of users have no idea what it even is.
This isn't hard to figure out. You can get a USB enclosure, with UASP and everything, for under 20 bucks, whereas with Thunderbolt you'll be spending $200-$300 just for the enclosure. That's a whole order of magnitude of difference in price. And at the same time, USB 3.0 is faster than most storage devices you'd put into the enclosure, so the difference is minimal enough that unless you're making Avatar or something, you're unlikely to even notice the difference. So those extra hundreds of dollars are, most of the time, just wasted money. Which is why USB enclosures are as numerous as sands on the beach, whereas TB enclosures are such a niche that no one's even gotten around to making a single-bay one with two ports on it yet.
Be careful; you may eat those words someday. People probably thought USB would never hit 5 Gbps (and soon, 10 Gbps) too. Way back in the day, there were people claiming USB 2.0 was never going to work.
Not with the costs that are built into the technology. I have severe doubts that TB can ever grow beyond the extremely high-end. I'd be delighted if I turn out to be wrong, but so far, we're three years in, and it still doesn't look that way.
Oh, come on, and you were being pretty civil up to this point. Don't tell me you're going to degenerate into ad hominems too. No, I don't have any "vested interest" in USB. I was actually a FireWire guy for a really long time... but then they stopped updating it. I'm in the process of replacing all my FW stuff with UASP, since its performance is surprisingly good and not at all lousy in the way that USB 2.0 was. Thunderbolt is not sufficiently better to justify the expense, particularly since there's no way of knowing if my next Mac will even still have TB ports on it. Apple giveth, and Apple taketh away. USB is here to stay, though.
USB is STILL for lower end CONSUMER I/O, NOT for the people that have more demanding needs for HIGHER END STORAGE.
Like there is an external RAID box that people are going to use USB for? Dream on.
I know USB is here to stay, but it's only for the LOW END, "I don't have any money" storage crowd. USB is for small amounts of data transfer needs.
Seriously, you need to NOT compare USB to Thunderbolt. They are both on my computer and I use BOTH. Thunderbolt for Storage, USB, for mice, USB 2 channel DAC for my stereo system, but that's about it. Oh, I also have a USB connection to my battery back up device, but that's not for data transfer.
Well of course there are a lot more USB devices, for the same reason there are a lot more USB devices for everything. USB is cheaper, it is consumer-friendly, it is good enough for the vast majority of people, and it is everywhere.
Of course it's not a trend anymore. They stopped freaking updating the thing. Which is a shame, really, because FireWire was a great technology. It was just exceptionally poorly marketed. If they'd played their cards right with it back in the 90s, FW could have been what USB is now.
(sigh)
That should be a surprise to no one.
No professional STUDIO is going to have 24, 32, 48, 64 channels of AD/DA on USB. Who does that? Name one TOP end studio that uses USB for their high track count DAWs. USB for tracking audio recording SUCKS because there is too much latency. Even Firewire has too much latency, but Thunderbolt doesn't. It's the trend for HIGH TRACK COUNT pro DAW market as it's going to start replacing MADI, Firewire, and USB.
I think you are stuck into thinking that USB Is still worthwhile for high end Pro applications, where it's clearly isn't.
Comments
No. The cables are fine. I can buy them at any Apple Store. I am bitching that I have nothing to plug them into because the cost of both the cables and the interfaces make Thunderbolt a niche market. Try buying an empty Thunderbolt drive enclosure for example. How about one of those devices that let you drop in 3.5 or 2.5 inch drives? What is available is vastly over priced due to the niche size of the market. The Chinese can't be bothered to make anything in volume for low prices because their margins are razor thin so they make USB 3.0 devices instead. Thunderbolt is a failed interface standard even more so than Firewire before it.
it sucks that you have a decent argument and everyone is so busy being snarky instead of just having a simple discussion. :-(
It's intended to replace FireWire. However, FireWire 1) wasn't as crazy expensive, 2) didn't have as many single-port devices, and 3) supported hubs to work around any single-port devices you did manage to find.
It's also been marketed exceptionally badly. Being Apple-exclusive for a whole year was something that never should have happened, as it has virtually guaranteed that TB will be relegated to an even smaller niche than FireWire was. It should have been put on Intel's standard motherboards, and Intel should have made the first generation of controllers cheaper in order to drive adoption, even if they had to take a slight loss on the lower controllers. They definitely shouldn't have charged high licensing fees (didn't anyone learn anything from FireWire?). If the technology had reached a wider audience, the price would have gone down as well due to economies of scale. As it is, we're what, three years in with Thunderbolt? And adoption is still pathetically low.
As for how it's engineered; if you're going to make it necessary for tons of devices to have only one port, and if you're going to take over the display port, you'd better make it possible to have hubs. FireWire did; I don't know whether TB is technically incapable of adding hubs or whether no one just bothers, but this is a big problem.
Frank777 linked to PCIe OCuLink, a technology that claims to be able to run PCIe to external devices without requiring expensive controller chips in the cabling, which should, at the very least, create cheaper devices. Plus, it probably won't eat the display port.
We were promised the ability to daisy-chain TB devices, with the display being the end point. Then, when that proved infeasible because of the high price point that TB requires, Intel went and released a single-port controller for making TB endpoint devices, which mucked up the whole design.
Let's have a look at that.
So the answer was basically, "no." You had to work around it via PCIe. Thanks for proving my point.
(What a great solution, by the way. Only $550! And so portable, too.)
Congratulations, you found a FireWire hard disk enclosure with only one port on it. That must have taken you forever. In the 64 results that come up when you search for "FireWire enclosure" on NewEgg (after you filter out the results that aren't enclosures or don't actually have FireWire on them), there's exactly one that doesn't have two ports on it, and it's that one. There's also one by Mediasonic that doesn't seem to be sold anymore by the manufacturer, and which I can't find any information on. It probably has two ports too, since most all FireWire enclosures do, but even if I grant you that one, that'd be 2 out of 64.
As you can see, the exception proves the rule.
And again, even if you had the gross misfortune to have picked up the one single crappiest FireWire enclosure on the planet, you'd still have been able to work around that because FireWire allows hubs. Such as...?
Again with the personal attacks, the surefire indicator of a weak argument.
Is that a bare enclosure you can put a drive in? Nope.
Is that a single-bay enclosure? Nope. (it's a 4x, designed for setting up a RAID)
So the result is: You were unable to find a simple, single-bay drive enclosure with two ports on it. Well, I suppose you could always get a freaking PCIe enclosure, then put an eSATA card or something in that and lug the whole works around with you, just to hook up a single hard drive. Sounds fun.
Not this crap again. How well has Thunderbolt been selling? How much market penetration has it reached? The answer to each is not good. The price has a huge amount to do with that, and nothing of it has anything at all to do with me personally.
Okay, not going to feed this troll any more.
If these guys and this site were around in the 90s, they'd probably be jumping down your throat for not defending the Pippin.
No. The cables are fine. I can buy them at any Apple Store. I am bitching that I have nothing to plug them into because the cost of both the cables and the interfaces make Thunderbolt a niche market. Try buying an empty Thunderbolt drive enclosure for example. How about one of those devices that let you drop in 3.5 or 2.5 inch drives? What is available is vastly over priced due to the niche size of the market. The Chinese can't be bothered to make anything in volume for low prices because their margins are razor thin so they make USB 3.0 devices instead. Thunderbolt is a failed interface standard even more so than Firewire before it.
Well, Thunderbolt is better performance than USB, so due to the better and more expensive technology, there aren't as many choices, but there are still a variety of products available. I bought a Drobo Mini where I can use SSD and/or HDDs and can upgrade easily to the next level if what I'm using isn't enough space. So for certain needs this box wasn't that expensive. There are others out there, but if you are just comparing USB enclosures to Thunderbolt enclosures and comparing price, that's not the way to go.
Not many people usually drop 3.5 or 2.5 inch drives in the same box. That's not really what you should be looking at. The smaller drive sizes are more for laptops. If you want the more reliable HDD's, then you go for the more expensive drives that would be used in an Enterprise Data Center and for that crowd, you can get NetStore, Promise, etc. Drobo has a few products that are decent I would look into. But Thunderbolt is more for the more serious minded professional and they typically don't buy based solely on price. That's a big mistake people tend to do.
I wouldn't look at a box by wanting to put 2.5 and 3.5 inch drives in the same box.. you would generally have to put the 2.5 inch drives in a cage that will fit in a 3.5 inch cage. Then you have to pay for that different cage.
I would go to this site to see what's on the market and check periodically because they are updating it as new products get to market.
https://thunderbolttechnology.net/products
But for the price conscious people, Thunderbolt isn't your answer, but if performance and reliability is, then Thunderbolt may be the ONLY answer. At least for the present future for desktop systems. USB really isn't meant for storage, even though people use it. I wouldn't even consider USB for any serious storage device.
USB was originally meant more for keyboards, mice, trackpads, direct connected printers. large data transfers clogs up the USB bus very easily. I even hate using USB for my DAC, but that's what's commonly used when using a Computer as source for a stereo system. If I could get a Thunderbolt DAC for my home stereo, I would have preferred that instead.
Bottom line, storage issues should be based more on performance, reliability FIRST, then convince, and price should be the last on the list. You definitely get what you pay for. USB is more for Flash drives and little convince type devices where it's more small data transfers. Anything more than that, it's Thunderbolt all the way. I compared USB 3 and Thunderbolt 1 on the same device and Thunderbolt kicked USB 3's ass, it wasn't even a contest. The device I have does both, but I prefer Thunderbolt.
Sorry, no, describing what you are is not a personal attack. Ignorance is not an insult. It’s a challenge.
Pretty well. Quite a bit.
You continue to fail to comprehend the market for Thunderbolt. Until you stop failing, you’ll never understand. This is ignorance on your part. Your challenge now is to stop being ignorant.
Yes, someone who explicitly responds to exactly what you say is a “troll”.
http://www.usb.org/developers/presentations/pres0410/2-4_SSUSB_DevCon_UASP_Stevens.pdf
Of course it's not going to be as fast as Thunderbolt, but in my testing, it's surprisingly fast (I've got an SSD that is performing noticeably better in a UASP enclosure than it did in the 3.0 Gbps SATA port of the laptop it used to be in), and it's faster than most actual devices you would put into the enclosure. And, needless to say, it's a lot easier to find.
Originally Posted by drblank
But for the price conscious people, Thunderbolt isn't your answer, but if performance and reliability is, then Thunderbolt may be the ONLY answer. At least for the present future for desktop systems. USB really isn't meant for storage, even though people use it. I wouldn't even consider USB for any serious storage device.
Again it is not so much the price that concerns me. It is the lack of selection. The best Thunderbolt enclosures on the market are made by LaCie but they don't offer their really sweet Little Big Disk enclosure without drives nor will they according to their representative I spoke to two weeks ago at a trade show. I pointed out that there are people on eBay that buy their least expensive model with hard drives and then outfit it with two 1 TB flash drives which is a configuration LaCie does not even offer and would probably charge more for if they did. It turned out that he had not even been aware of that before someone else at the show told him earlier the same day. This should give you some idea just how small the market for Thunderbolt drives really is.
BTW, I eyed that Drobo enclosure with 4 2.5 inch drive slots. That looks like the best choice currently but it does not have Thunderbolt 2 yet like that nice black high end LaCie 1TB drive but at least you can fill it up however you want.
PS I am not interested in 2.5 and 3 inch drives in the same box. I just failed to write the message clearly enough. I meant either not both together.
Again it is not so much the price that concerns me. It is the lack of selection. The best Thunderbolt enclosures on the market are made by LaCie but they don't offer their really sweet Little Big Disk enclosure without drives nor will they according to their representative I spoke to two weeks ago at a trade show. I pointed out that there are people on eBay that buy their least expensive model with hard drives and then outfit it with two 1 TB flash drives which is a configuration LaCie does not even offer and would probably charge more for if they did. It turned out that he had not even been aware of that before someone else at the show told him earlier the same day. This should give you some idea just how small the market for Thunderbolt drives really is.
BTW, I eyed that Drobo enclosure with 4 2.5 inch drive slots. That looks like the best choice currently but it does not have Thunderbolt 2 yet like that nice black high end LaCie 1TB drive but at least you can fill it up however you want.
PS I am not interested in 2.5 and 3 inch drives in the same box. I just failed to write the message clearly enough. I meant either not both together.
The LaCie LBD had some limitations, I was looking at that as well. The larger Drobo are cool because they have battery backup and other features, but they are a little pricey. I got the Drobo mini, while it has some limitations, for my needs, it does just fine. I use it as a SSD RAID for backups. But you can stick the smaller laptop drives in it, plus add a SSD drive on the bottom to make it perform similar to the Fusion drive concept. It's not that expensive of an enclosure, it's got two small fans and is quiet. The LaCie from my knowledge is a lot louder. Some people don't mind loud fans, but i do.
I guess you really have to look at your needs and go through what's on the market. As with any new technology, it takes time for products to surface, just ANY technology, but since TB can replace Firewire, USB, Fiber Channel, etc. it's just the best bet for larger storage requirements. But check out NetStor, Promise, Drobo, OWC. They have products you can buy your own drives. Just be VERY careful before you start buying drives, some products simply don't work with certain enclosures, so you have to be REAL careful as to what brand/model drives you buy.
If I was to do this all over again, I would have probably buy the bigger Drobo box, but I just simply couldn't afford it. I like the mini because it's small, I use SSD in RAID, it's quiet, affordable, comes with both Thunderbolt and USB 3 (just in case), and it comes with cables, so there isn't added cost of cables. but it won't work with certain brands/models of SSDs, and I can't make it a boot up drive, at least not yet.
Oh, OK. Yeah, I was a little shocked that someone would mix drives like that. Don't worry. We all make mistakes typing things.
Did your USB 3 enclosure support UASP? A lot of the clogging-up issues that USB had were caused by the crappy BOT protocol it was stuck with for a long time. UASP solves most of the issues that BOT had, and can do things like send commands and data in parallel in order to keep things moving more smoothly. You can see some information about that here:
http://www.usb.org/developers/presentations/pres0410/2-4_SSUSB_DevCon_UASP_Stevens.pdf
Of course it's not going to be as fast as Thunderbolt, but in my testing, it's surprisingly fast (I've got an SSD that is performing noticeably better in a UASP enclosure than it did in the 3.0 Gbps SATA port of the laptop it used to be in), and it's faster than most actual devices you would put into the enclosure. And, needless to say, it's a lot easier to find.
I have a USB DAC, and EVERY SINGLE time I've read about using a USB DAC, they say NOT to have a USB drive on the same bus. This isn't an enclosure issue, this is an issue that USB SUCKS, it's not a good I/O for having multiple devices on the same bus that move lots of data in any one direction.
As far as my USB 3/Thunderbolt RAID box, it doesn't say whether it is or it isn't UASP. Maybe that's another problem with USB. Lack of consistency.
I just don't think USB is meant for serious data transfers. It's meant more of small data transfers. I'm just not going to use it anymore. I've had more USB external drives crap out, give me problems on way or form and i'm sick of it. USB SUCKS for storage.
With that said, if your DAC is USB 2.0, I think that actually is on a separate bus from your USB 3.0 stuff, since USB 3.0 uses different pins on the connector and everything (at least, they show up as separate busses in System Profiler).
If it's not advertised as UASP, it probably isn't, since UASP is still fairly new and not ubiquitous yet (although it seems to be getting there; a lot of the newer USB 3.0 chipsets support UASP). You can check by cracking open the case and having a look at the bridge chip to see what model it is (the most popular UASP-compatible chipset is the ASMedia ASM1053, although there are others, including the Oxford OXU3100 which OWC uses). Note that you might need a magnifying glass to read the model number on the chip; it can be pretty tiny sometimes.
The other thing you can do is do a clean boot with no devices attached, make sure the IOUSBAttachedSCSI kext isn't loaded, then connect your drive and see if the kext gets loaded. If it does, you've got UASP. If it doesn't, then the drive probably doesn't support UASP, although it could still be something else like the chipset on your computer's motherboard itself being too old to support UASP.
While I'll admit that not knowing if your drive supports UASP can be frustrating, I'm glad we don't have "consistency" here, because if we did, everything would be stuck with that horrible old BOT protocol, which really does suck.
When it comes to DAC converters for 2 channel stereo, there isn't any Firewire based solutions. For the Professional Audio recording industry, there are, but as you can plainly see, that's one of the many reasons why Apple wanted what we now call Thunderbolt. Apple was working on a faster and better implementation of Firewire as they were working on Firewire 1600 and beyond, but decided to forgo Firewire and have Intel create Thunderbolt. MADI was created for the higher track count A/D and D/A for the Professional Audio recording industry, but they are moving away from that and over to Thunderbolt. I think right now, there are three or four major players in the A/D and D/A industry that are moving away from Firewire, MADI, over to Thunderbolt. But for DACs for our home stereo, they usually connect via USB, some will connect with other means, but USB 2.0 is by tar the most popular. For 2 channel you don't really need much more than USB 2.0, but the issue is sharing with a disk drive, it's just going to cause problems. like I said, if there was a Thunderbolt DAC, then I would certain do that, but there isn't. So, whatever is going on with USB storage, I'm not interested and I should have to see if something is UASP or not, if it's part of the standard, then everything should be complaint if it's got a USB 3.0 port.
Case closed. Thunderbolt is vastly superior for large data transfer in both directions, daisy chain able, etc. and that's why more of the high track count A/D and D/A are moving towards Thunderbolt.
What's part of the issue is there are already high end customers that have a tremendous amount of investment in their existing equipment whether it's Firewire based, MADI based, Fibre Channel, etc, and as time goes on, these customers will be changing over to Thunderbolt whenever they can because it's the next wave in I/O, that's why there was a lot of pressure to get the new MacPros out because that was Apple's first implementation of Thunderbolt (and TB2) for the MacPro. So, anyone that looks at sales as an indicator, should realize that some have been implementing Thunderbolt based products mostly on laptops and iMacs and since the MacPros just came out within the last couple of months, that has gained momentum until they start replacing their computers with the MacPro, or other PC based Thunderbolt 1/2 motherboards. Plus, the mfg of Thunderbolt products are still coming out with more and more products to serve mostly the audio recording industry, video production industry and mass storage that's directly connected. So for connecting directly to the computer, Thunderbolt is the emerging standard. USB 3.1 is almost as good as Thunderbolt 1, but Thunderbolt 1 is moving towards Thunderbolt 2, so I guess the best thing to say is Thunderbolt is WAY ahead of USB and will most likely continue to be that way in terms of serving the higher end needs of data transfer and other specialized products. And as we speak there is no USB 3.1 anything on the market so that spec is premature and nothing is available.
I STILL don't know why people want to hang on to the notion of USB for data storage for anything other than maybe USB sticks when there's Thunderbolt. I think it's ridiculous to compare the two and to even think that Thunderbolt is going away because it isn't. It's got a lot more growth as Intel said that it will eventually go to 100GB in either direction, which will take some time, but I don't see USB ever moving that far.
I think as Apple moves all of their products to Thunderbolt 2, we'll see more products on the market serving the lower end needs to the higher end needs, it's just a matter of getting the computers on the market and then people having these needs as the size of their data grows.
Also, what's you involvement in USB? Do you work for an organization that promotes USB? Do you have a vested interest in USB? I'm trying to figure out why someone wants to compare USB to Thunderbolt. I don't have any vested interest in either. I just hate USB for storage based on past experience. :-)
I forgot to mention, in the world of A/D conversion for the higher end audio recording industry, USB has too much latency, which is what they want to avoid at all costs, which is why they leaned towards MADI, but I think more and more will eventually move to Thunderbolt because it's built in rather than buying MADI card for a few hundred dollars and requiring a slot. Same rules applies toward Fibre Channel. Thunderbolt kind of removes that.
This one could if the USB 3 mode means that they can get rid of USB 3 ports. Thunderbolt ports are smaller in width by half. If they can simply sell a Thunderbolt 3 to USB 3 cable, they can switch from 2x TB + 2x USB 3 to 4x TB. This not only means 4 displays on a laptop but 4 USB ports for laptop users with no displays attached. USB pens won't fit and mice with micro-adaptors but there are few other devices where a TB to USB cable would be a problem. They can leave one USB port for convenience.
TB currently supplies 10W but it's not enough:
http://store.apple.com/us/question/answers/readonly/if-theres-10w-of-power-through-the-thunderbolt-cable-why-does-it-require-an-external-power-supply/QJJPDUPCFH9P4K9T9
The reduced power of the TB components itself will help but the added power opens up the possibility of larger portable RAID, larger portable bus-powered displays and as mentioned, the ability to power an entire laptop using a single cable from a TB display. It may even be possible for one display to power a laptop over 1 port and a 2nd display over another, using only one wall plug. That might require too large an internal PSU in the display but the iMac has over 300W PSU so it's possible.
If they want to make a 4K TB display, this would be a good thing to wait for as it means a single laptop can drive dual 4K displays over one port and be powered over the same cable.
The plug change is not important when the processors are in the plug. They can have plugs like they had with FW with 800 on one end and 400 on the other.
Cheaper cables would be nice. Even at $29, buying one per port for 4 ports comes out pricey. Under $10 is probably unlikely but somewhere in the middle. If they currently have 40% margins, they can do $19 and still make some profit.
Could it be possible that the new TB connector type be a lightning connector. The use of display port for the first iteration of TB would have assisted adoption rather than create the need for further port, but now almost all mobile idevices have a lightning port. Lightning has ten pins (two hidden on the sides) and so if another row of pins in the female connector were added, it could be utilised for thunderbolt connections. The 100 W power seems too similar to new USB C connector specs to be a coincidence. The ~ 3 mm connector size could be reference to a lightning female connector. Would make sense and in keeping with the desire to minimise the number of connectors. A lightning connector with thunderbolt protocols could eliminate the need for power, HDMI, ethernet, USB and audio inputs/ouputs on mobile macs. This unified approach could lead to lightning being the only connector needed. The new apple TV or ipanel with a single lightning input, just like an iPad on steroids, with all the input and output in one cable. Maybe more inputs to keep the masses happy in the power plug, but in time wean everyone from the idea of a single connector for a single protocol. And when bandwidth and larger market adoption drives cable prices down, lightning connector could have optical input at end of tip added, and perhaps Apple's funky use of magnets could align the sapphire iris correctly, leaving the copper pins to transport the power. Just an idea. But would make sense if the ethos of apple's design is to simplify everything and make it all easier for the user. The high price of the cable is then to accommodate for the chips that tell that cable what it is connected to and how it is to act (i.e., power supply, data pipe, A/V out at end of daisy chain etc). Just a thought.
No it doesn't. The cal digit (and other) TB docks support HDMI 1.4 out. Which means if you're dumb enough to buy single port TB drive bays for a single TB port Mac you can still run a display and your TB device.
At a minimum you can support a 1080p monitor. It should also support a HDMI 1.3 compliant 2560x1600 monitor but my dell doesn't support HDMI at that rez without driver tweaking and I haven't bothered since I use mDP.
They sure did!
(sigh)
And that's a legit reason to not use USB storage, just like if you were using a FW-based DAC, it'd be a legit reason not to use FW storage. Busses aren't magic, and even with the modern 5/10 Gbps busses, modern SSDs are fast enough to use a decent chunk of that.
Mostly because FireWire isn't being developed anymore and there's no real replacement for it.
The trouble is, the "higher end needs of data transfer and other specialized products" is a tiny niche. When TB was announced, they were promising so much more than that. Look at all those docks available for TB. It clearly wants to be a consumer product, but it will never make it there, because the way it's designed makes it inherently expensive (like the chips in the cables). And without consumer support, it becomes very difficult for computer manufacturers to justify the added cost to put TB on the motherboard, because it just doesn't generate the sales to make it worthwhile. So while I'm sure it'll stay on the Mac Pro for some time, for the majority of Apple's lineup, I wouldn't get too attached to always having the Thunderbolt port there, when 99.99% of users have no idea what it even is.
This isn't hard to figure out. You can get a USB enclosure, with UASP and everything, for under 20 bucks, whereas with Thunderbolt you'll be spending $200-$300 just for the enclosure. That's a whole order of magnitude of difference in price. And at the same time, USB 3.0 is faster than most storage devices you'd put into the enclosure, so the difference is minimal enough that unless you're making Avatar or something, you're unlikely to even notice the difference. So those extra hundreds of dollars are, most of the time, just wasted money. Which is why USB enclosures are as numerous as sands on the beach, whereas TB enclosures are such a niche that no one's even gotten around to making a single-bay one with two ports on it yet.
Be careful; you may eat those words someday. People probably thought USB would never hit 5 Gbps (and soon, 10 Gbps) too. Way back in the day, there were people claiming USB 2.0 was never going to work.
Not with the costs that are built into the technology. I have severe doubts that TB can ever grow beyond the extremely high-end. I'd be delighted if I turn out to be wrong, but so far, we're three years in, and it still doesn't look that way.
Oh, come on, and you were being pretty civil up to this point. Don't tell me you're going to degenerate into ad hominems too. No, I don't have any "vested interest" in USB. I was actually a FireWire guy for a really long time... but then they stopped updating it. I'm in the process of replacing all my FW stuff with UASP, since its performance is surprisingly good and not at all lousy in the way that USB 2.0 was. Thunderbolt is not sufficiently better to justify the expense, particularly since there's no way of knowing if my next Mac will even still have TB ports on it. Apple giveth, and Apple taketh away. USB is here to stay, though.
http://oyendigital.com/minipro-thunderbolt-ssd.html#?
Or this one?
http://www.akitio.com/portable-storage/neutrino-thunderboltedition
Or this one?
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD464ZM/A/apple-thunderbolt-to-firewire-adapter?afid=p219|GOUS&cid=AOS-US-KWG-PLA
Or, since we were talking about high-end audio, this one?
http://www.avid.com/US/products/Pro-Tools-HD-native
(BTW, can you even figure out how many ports it has from looking at that website? I couldn't find it without downloading the PDF manual, which is the other problem with TB — you have to do research just to find out if you can use something and still have a monitor.)
There's a fan site for Thunderbolt at https://thunderbolttechnology.net/ . It lists Thunderbolt products, and has the handy feature of listing how many ports they have. Almost half of them have only one port.
What? There are plenty of FireWire-based DAC solutions out there. I used to work with one of them way back in my undergraduate days, when I worked in my university's AV lab. Given that that was about a decade ago, the model we were using surely isn't available anymore, but a simple Google search will still turn up plenty of FireWire DAC units. For example: http://thewelltemperedcomputer.com/HW/Firewire.htm
They sure did!
(sigh)
And that's a legit reason to not use USB storage, just like if you were using a FW-based DAC, it'd be a legit reason not to use FW storage. Busses aren't magic, and even with the modern 5/10 Gbps busses, modern SSDs are fast enough to use a decent chunk of that.
Mostly because FireWire isn't being developed anymore and there's no real replacement for it.
The trouble is, the "higher end needs of data transfer and other specialized products" is a tiny niche. When TB was announced, they were promising so much more than that. Look at all those docks available for TB. It clearly wants to be a consumer product, but it will never make it there, because the way it's designed makes it inherently expensive (like the chips in the cables). And without consumer support, it becomes very difficult for computer manufacturers to justify the added cost to put TB on the motherboard, because it just doesn't generate the sales to make it worthwhile. So while I'm sure it'll stay on the Mac Pro for some time, for the majority of Apple's lineup, I wouldn't get too attached to always having the Thunderbolt port there, when 99.99% of users have no idea what it even is.
This isn't hard to figure out. You can get a USB enclosure, with UASP and everything, for under 20 bucks, whereas with Thunderbolt you'll be spending $200-$300 just for the enclosure. That's a whole order of magnitude of difference in price. And at the same time, USB 3.0 is faster than most storage devices you'd put into the enclosure, so the difference is minimal enough that unless you're making Avatar or something, you're unlikely to even notice the difference. So those extra hundreds of dollars are, most of the time, just wasted money. Which is why USB enclosures are as numerous as sands on the beach, whereas TB enclosures are such a niche that no one's even gotten around to making a single-bay one with two ports on it yet.
Be careful; you may eat those words someday. People probably thought USB would never hit 5 Gbps (and soon, 10 Gbps) too. Way back in the day, there were people claiming USB 2.0 was never going to work.
Not with the costs that are built into the technology. I have severe doubts that TB can ever grow beyond the extremely high-end. I'd be delighted if I turn out to be wrong, but so far, we're three years in, and it still doesn't look that way.
Oh, come on, and you were being pretty civil up to this point. Don't tell me you're going to degenerate into ad hominems too. No, I don't have any "vested interest" in USB. I was actually a FireWire guy for a really long time... but then they stopped updating it. I'm in the process of replacing all my FW stuff with UASP, since its performance is surprisingly good and not at all lousy in the way that USB 2.0 was. Thunderbolt is not sufficiently better to justify the expense, particularly since there's no way of knowing if my next Mac will even still have TB ports on it. Apple giveth, and Apple taketh away. USB is here to stay, though.
I know USB is here to stay for the home audio computer crowd. Firewire DACs for home audio systems? NOPE. There's a couple but it's not the most popular for the home audio crowd. You have a link that shows about 8 products. For USB there are literally HUNDREDS. The list grows every freaking day. If I listed them all, by the time I finished there would probably another 20 added in the time frame I wrote the list. USB for home audio 2 channel is what's the most popular right now. The only Firewire ones you listed are used more for Pro Audio crowd, NOT the home audio 2 channel crowd.
There are only a small handful of companies that STILL have Firewire, but it's NOT a trend anymore, it's a dead market. For the PRO Market that has the HIGH TRACK count, you have Avid, Apogee, Aurora, Universal Audio so far and I think a few more will be adding to the list. I think you are looking at more prosumer converters for doing computer based recording where you aren't tracking lots of instruments at the same time.
But If you want me to list all of the companies that make 2 channel DACs for home audio crowd? Go look at a Stereophile Buyer's guide and they probably only have 1/2 of what's REALLY on the market and they probably have HUNDREDS of models listed. You seem to not be looking at the home audio industry, that link you showed only has older products that are not really what home audio people have and are buying. I'm talking about the TRENDS for NEW products and existing products that companies make and people are still buying for the HOME. I think you are confused when I discuss USB DACs. I though I made myself clear. But I will say it again. USB DACs for the HOME is what is on the market and that's the trend, UNFORTUNATELY. For the HIGH END multi-track count AD/DA converters that's a growing market and they are going away from USB and Firewire and moving to Thunderbolt because they want to go up to 64 channels. MADI is out there, but Thunderbolt is catching up with TB 2. We'll probably see some TB 2 announcements in that area.
Of course it's not a trend anymore. They stopped freaking updating the thing. Which is a shame, really, because FireWire was a great technology. It was just exceptionally poorly marketed. If they'd played their cards right with it back in the 90s, FW could have been what USB is now.
(sigh)
That should be a surprise to no one.
What? There are plenty of FireWire-based DAC solutions out there. I used to work with one of them way back in my undergraduate days, when I worked in my university's AV lab. Given that that was about a decade ago, the model we were using surely isn't available anymore, but a simple Google search will still turn up plenty of FireWire DAC units. For example: http://thewelltemperedcomputer.com/HW/Firewire.htm
They sure did!
(sigh)
And that's a legit reason to not use USB storage, just like if you were using a FW-based DAC, it'd be a legit reason not to use FW storage. Busses aren't magic, and even with the modern 5/10 Gbps busses, modern SSDs are fast enough to use a decent chunk of that.
Mostly because FireWire isn't being developed anymore and there's no real replacement for it.
The trouble is, the "higher end needs of data transfer and other specialized products" is a tiny niche. When TB was announced, they were promising so much more than that. Look at all those docks available for TB. It clearly wants to be a consumer product, but it will never make it there, because the way it's designed makes it inherently expensive (like the chips in the cables). And without consumer support, it becomes very difficult for computer manufacturers to justify the added cost to put TB on the motherboard, because it just doesn't generate the sales to make it worthwhile. So while I'm sure it'll stay on the Mac Pro for some time, for the majority of Apple's lineup, I wouldn't get too attached to always having the Thunderbolt port there, when 99.99% of users have no idea what it even is.
This isn't hard to figure out. You can get a USB enclosure, with UASP and everything, for under 20 bucks, whereas with Thunderbolt you'll be spending $200-$300 just for the enclosure. That's a whole order of magnitude of difference in price. And at the same time, USB 3.0 is faster than most storage devices you'd put into the enclosure, so the difference is minimal enough that unless you're making Avatar or something, you're unlikely to even notice the difference. So those extra hundreds of dollars are, most of the time, just wasted money. Which is why USB enclosures are as numerous as sands on the beach, whereas TB enclosures are such a niche that no one's even gotten around to making a single-bay one with two ports on it yet.
Be careful; you may eat those words someday. People probably thought USB would never hit 5 Gbps (and soon, 10 Gbps) too. Way back in the day, there were people claiming USB 2.0 was never going to work.
Not with the costs that are built into the technology. I have severe doubts that TB can ever grow beyond the extremely high-end. I'd be delighted if I turn out to be wrong, but so far, we're three years in, and it still doesn't look that way.
Oh, come on, and you were being pretty civil up to this point. Don't tell me you're going to degenerate into ad hominems too. No, I don't have any "vested interest" in USB. I was actually a FireWire guy for a really long time... but then they stopped updating it. I'm in the process of replacing all my FW stuff with UASP, since its performance is surprisingly good and not at all lousy in the way that USB 2.0 was. Thunderbolt is not sufficiently better to justify the expense, particularly since there's no way of knowing if my next Mac will even still have TB ports on it. Apple giveth, and Apple taketh away. USB is here to stay, though.
USB is STILL for lower end CONSUMER I/O, NOT for the people that have more demanding needs for HIGHER END STORAGE.
Like there is an external RAID box that people are going to use USB for? Dream on.
I know USB is here to stay, but it's only for the LOW END, "I don't have any money" storage crowd. USB is for small amounts of data transfer needs.
Seriously, you need to NOT compare USB to Thunderbolt. They are both on my computer and I use BOTH. Thunderbolt for Storage, USB, for mice, USB 2 channel DAC for my stereo system, but that's about it. Oh, I also have a USB connection to my battery back up device, but that's not for data transfer.
Well of course there are a lot more USB devices, for the same reason there are a lot more USB devices for everything. USB is cheaper, it is consumer-friendly, it is good enough for the vast majority of people, and it is everywhere.
Of course it's not a trend anymore. They stopped freaking updating the thing. Which is a shame, really, because FireWire was a great technology. It was just exceptionally poorly marketed. If they'd played their cards right with it back in the 90s, FW could have been what USB is now.
(sigh)
That should be a surprise to no one.
No professional STUDIO is going to have 24, 32, 48, 64 channels of AD/DA on USB. Who does that? Name one TOP end studio that uses USB for their high track count DAWs. USB for tracking audio recording SUCKS because there is too much latency. Even Firewire has too much latency, but Thunderbolt doesn't. It's the trend for HIGH TRACK COUNT pro DAW market as it's going to start replacing MADI, Firewire, and USB.
I think you are stuck into thinking that USB Is still worthwhile for high end Pro applications, where it's clearly isn't.