Thunderbolt questions

#1

Right now I have an iMac with a FW port and two daisy-chained hard drives and two monitors on both TB ports. Since the FW connection is too slow for my purposes I was thinking of linking both hard drives onto one TB port through a hub or split, but I’d lose one monitor.

So I’m looking for some kind of hub or split for a thunderbolt port, idealy with 2 or more FW ports and a TB port.
So far I found these three
http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10574
http://www.sonnettech.com/product/echoexpresscard34thunderbolt.html
http://www.belkin.com/us/p/P-F4U055

I think I could also replace my hard drives with this one
http://www.g-technology.eu/de/products/g-drive-pro.php
but I’m not sure if I can daisy chain my 3rd monitor through it.

Any thoughts, hints?

#2

A single one of those ports will usually manage more than respectably a couple drives.
It’s when multiple drives are chained along two monitors that you start seeing a considerable enough drop in performance apparently (sync signal forcing latency is a possibility, I’m not sure it’s been nailed yet).

http://www.macworld.com/article/1163773/thunderbolt_how_devices_affect_each_other_on_a_daisy_chain.html

Compared to old firewire drives, you are still very likely to come out on top.

Thunderbolt is meant to allow for long daisy chains of external drives and monitors.
You also don’t need hubs for TB devices, the whole point is daisy chaining, which means all external devices will have two ports and uplink capabilities with transparent signal management and syncing.

#3

Thanks for the link, will go shopping at the weekend and report back next week.

#4

OK, nnow I got a WD My Book Thunderbolt Duo running as a Raid 0 replacing the two FW 800 hard disks daisy chained to an iMac and all our display hickups and slow reads are gone.
Everything’s running really smooth, thanks for the advice.

#5

Congratulations I guess :slight_smile: It’s nice when things end up just working, thunderbolt has that quality for sure.

#6

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