Looking for an easy and inexpensive way to add USB3.0 to my Mid-2011 MacMini.
It has Firewire800, USB2 and Thunderbolt.
I have several new USB3.0 hard drives that work great with my 2012 Macbook Air, but would like the same speed on my MacMini, which is my main "desktop" computer.
thanks.
Mac mini, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)
Allan, I don't think you're getting the technical hardware underpinnings here. And I won't claim to be an engineer that understands it intimately myself. But the Mini does have what amounts to internal PCIe, otherwise its Thunderbolt wouldn't be able to carry any data. The Thunderbolt port is part of the PCIe bus. Yes, if you go to System Report on a Mini it will tell you that you have no PCIe cards. But that's misleading.
In the review I read on that earlier today it stated that the Thunderbolt was output. In order to get the PCIe expansion enclosure operational it has to be connected to an operational PCIe bus in the computer.
Allan
The expansion enclosure uses a PCIe card to plug into the PCIe bus. This the Mac Mini does not have.
Allan
It's a hub that you can put a hard drive into. And there are tons of other hubs that don't have space for a hard drive and are less expensive. I'm sure you can find them.
You're playing semantic games now, and I'm no longer interested. Buh-bye.
Thunderbolt is what one may consider a physical layer,
that is hardware. What is carried on Thunderbolt would
be considered a transport layer.
The transport layer on Thunderbolt consists of two
protocols. Display Port protocol is one which supports
direct video interface. The other is a 2 channel PCI
Express protocol.
On the Mini (2011 or newer), if one is running Windows 7
via Bootcamp, the Thunderbolt Port appears as an extension
of the internal PCI Express bus. Any card adapter (of which there
are a couple available) will basically route these signals into
a card edge connector in the box any card plugged in will
appear in the Windows environment.
With OSX however, it has an additional layer of complexity
to the Thunderbolt interface by requiring that a driver be
"Thunderbolt Aware".
The one idea of the Thunderbolt standard is to make available
an external expasion bus that can be as flexible as possible
which was one of the reasons for the PCI Express protocol.
Need an easy way to add USB3.0 to Mid-2011 MacMini
