Repeated Thunderbolt cable failures

I've been having similar issues with my thunderbolt cables, although none have actually failed. I have gone from a 2011 macbook air 11" to a new 13" macbook pro 2012. For both of these I use the seaget goflex 500GB drive for time machine with the thunderbolt adapter and both apple's thunderbolt cable and elgato's shorter thunderbolt cable. Every time I try to connect the drive, I wait and wait and wait but the laptop sees nothing. I end up having to unplug and reconnect the cable several times in order for osx to actually "see" the drive and start time machine. I had this problem with the apple cable first on my macbook air and was happy when the shorter elgato cable was released. I was hoping to solve both my flaky issue and to finally have a shorter cable for my backup solution. Unfortunately, the elgato now has the exact same behavior. I can't really say they are both "bad", since they eventually work, but I shouldnt have to try and try and have to continually reseat them in order for them to work. I need to take everything in to apple and have them take a look one day.

I'm having the same issue, with my Lacie external Thunderbolt drive.

Bought the Seagate Backup Plus and a Thunderbolt adapter and after using it a while, it completely failed too boot. After multiple purchases, trial and error, I too discovered it was the Thunderbolt cable that went bad. Replacement of the cable (Radio Shack $39.99) made the drive boot up again. Its a pain but I'm just glad I got my data back!

One thing to remember, the drive does not boot up or even turn on until the cable (a working cable) is inserted into the computer. That means that you may think the problem is with the Thunderobolt adapter. This makes you be a doofis and buy a new adapter like I did. And the adapter costs more than the drive. SO do yourself a favor and try the cable first. Even if its new. I think these Thunderbolt cables are flakey in general. Fast, but flakey.

I had similar issues with both my Lacie external Thunderbolt drive and the Thunderbolt ethernet adapter. Just learned from an Apple store that these cables often fail if you bend them too much. Sure enough, when I straighten up the cable to Lacie (previously the Lacie drive was in front of the computer so the cable is bending at a sharp angle from the back of the drive) and the short ethernet adapter Thunderbolt cable, both are working fine now. So you may want to look at how the devices are connected to see if the cables are bending at sharp angles or not.

Well, the Thunderbolt cables are actually way more complex than they appear. There are chips in the ends. So any type of man-handling is probably going to be bad for them. Guess SCSI cables did have at least one thing going for them. ; )

Well, I've been through the cable failure once and now it has happened again. It lasted a few months since the last one so not sure what triggers the fail!! I've got both My Book Duo and Lacie (daisy chained from the My Book Duo).

My Thunderbolt cable on my Lacie is out too! I'm using the USB and it's way too slow this way. There is definitely a problem with Lacie 4T Thunderbolt drives.

I just google this problem and found this thread. I was wondering if people have the same experience as me with my cables. I went through like 7 cables already and all of them fail by gradually ripped off protective coat next to lighting connection, then expose shielding screen that eventually too gets ripped off making the cable nonfunctional. I noticed that sometimes that happens to the end close to USB connector, but mostly lightning. The problem starts like this...