For Christmas my family gave me a 2T Little Big Disk thunderbolt external drive. I have a mid 2010 Mac Pro which doesn't have a thunderbolt port. Is there a PCI card I can use to connect the drive to my Mac Pro?
Mac Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.1)
Unfortunately, no.
Unfortunately, no.
Read this:
http://barefeats.com/hard156.html
SATA cards still more than hold their own and at lower prices.
That doesn't let you install thunderbolt cards into a 2010 Mac Pro.. That just lets you bridge PCI-e cards via thunderbolt.
Those "adapters" are standard HBA. Like ATTO and others.
| eSATA/USB | |||||
| CalDigit FASTA-6GU3 2 port USB 3.0 & 2 Port eSATA 6Gb/s host adapter |  | | | | |
| PCIe Bus Extender | |||||
| Sonnet Express Bus Extender PCIe 2.0 | | | | | |
| SAS/SATA | |||||
| ATTO ExpressSAS H680 Adapter | | | | | |
| ATTO ExpressSAS H6F0 Adapter | | | | | |
| ATTO ExpressSAS H644 Adapter | | | | | |
| ATTO ExpressSAS R680 RAID Adapter(2) | | | | | |
| Firmtek Seritek/e6G 2 Port eSATA PCI Express (PCIe) Serial ATA Adapter | | | | | |
| Newer Technology MAXPower eSATA 6G PCIe 2.0 Controller Card | | | | | |
| Newer Technology MAXPower RAID mini-SAS 6G-1e1i Controller Card(3) | | | | | |
| Newer Technology MAXPower RAID mini-SAS 6G-2e Controller Card(3) | | | | | |
| Sonnet Tempo SATA 6Gb Pro 2-port | | | | | |
| Sonnet Tempo SATA 6Gb Pro 4-port | | | | | |
| Sonnet 6Gb/s SAS/SATA RAID Controller(2) | |||||
Those "adapters" are standard HBA. Like ATTO and others.
| eSATA/USB | |||||
| CalDigit FASTA-6GU3 2 port USB 3.0 & 2 Port eSATA 6Gb/s host adapter | | | | | |
| PCIe Bus Extender | |||||
| Sonnet Express Bus Extender PCIe 2.0 | | | | | |
| SAS/SATA | |||||
| ATTO ExpressSAS H680 Adapter | | | | | |
| ATTO ExpressSAS H6F0 Adapter | | | | | |
| ATTO ExpressSAS H644 Adapter | | | | | |
| ATTO ExpressSAS R680 RAID Adapter(2) | | | | | |
| Firmtek Seritek/e6G 2 Port eSATA PCI Express (PCIe) Serial ATA Adapter | | | | | |
| Newer Technology MAXPower eSATA 6G PCIe 2.0 Controller Card | | | | | |
| Newer Technology MAXPower RAID mini-SAS 6G-1e1i Controller Card(3) | | | | | |
| Newer Technology MAXPower RAID mini-SAS 6G-2e Controller Card(3) | | | | | |
| Sonnet Tempo SATA 6Gb Pro 2-port | | | | | |
| Sonnet Tempo SATA 6Gb Pro 4-port | | | | | |
| Sonnet 6Gb/s SAS/SATA RAID Controller(2) | |||||
those are standard HBA controllers which are called 'adapters' of the SAS/SATA kind.
look at ATTO, Firmtek, Caldigit, etc
None of those answer the question of "using a thunderbolt device with a mac pro". 🙂
No, there will never be a thunderbolt PCI-E card because TB technology requires direct access to the CPU and GPU (which is also why there has not been a new MacPro in three years). Your best option is to return the drive for a refund and/or exchange it for an enclosure with FireWire 800.
Tell your family, "Next time check with me" or something to that effect.
That would completely defeat the point of a gift and it would be extremely rude/ungrateful.
Mid 2010 Mac Pro - Thunderbolt External Hard Drive
