New Mac Pro: Adapting USB3 & TB to eSATA and FW800. Which is fastest?

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Level 1

13 points

New Mac Pro: Adapting USB3 & TB to eSATA and FW800. Which is fastest?

Hi,

I am buying a New MacPro. I have a number of high quality CalDigit external drives but they all have both eSATA and FW800 connectors.

what is my best route to go when connecting them to my MacPro? USB3 to eSATA? USB3 to FW800? TB to eSATA? TB to FW800?

Which of these would be fastest in terms of throughput?

I think that only FW800 will allow devices to be Daisey Chained... but I'm not sure if FW800 daisey chaning will even work if it starts with a TB or USB3 adaptor.

Thanks

MacPro 2.66, Mac OS X (10.6.7), GB ram.. iLife 08 /Aperture / CS 5

Posted on Feb 22, 2014 7:45 AM

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Answer 1

The hatter

Level 9

60,990 points

Feb 22, 2014 7:59 AM in response to hassiman

If your budget allows you to now then I would go with a 4-drive native Thunderbolt interface for your old drives and leave Firewire behind.

CalDigit Thunderbolt T3

http://www.caldigit.com/T3/http://www.caldigit.com/thunderboltstation/

There is USB3 but it is a shared bus and depends how you feel about multiple independent drives. I never liked or used or trusted really after some early scares to daisy chain FW devices and drives.

Thunderbolt does allow for a daisy chain.

USB3 hard drive enclosure.

For those without eSATA enclosures, a simple eSATA to USB3 adapter might do the trick.

USB3 is plenty fast to house two hard drives.

OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual.

Available now starting at about $430.

review of the OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual.

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/thunderbolt/index.html

http://gigaom.com/2013/12/21/the-technology-gap-between-the-old-and-new-mac-pro- could-cost-you-a-mini/

BUFFALO DriveStation DDR 3 TB Ultra Fast USB 3.0 Hard Drive with DDR3 RAM Cache

http://www.amazon.com/BUFFALO-DriveStation-Ultra-Drive-Cache/dp/B00C0NWAPS/ref=p sdc12_t3_B008R7EWF2_B00C0NWAPS

LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt 2