To bolt or not to bolt?

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Level 1

4 points

To bolt or not to bolt?

I just purchased a refurbished and upgraded 2009 mac pro, with the intent to use it for video editing, encoding and moderate 2d graphics. All the specs are right, in my opinion, but I've just realized a critical flaw in my master scheme: No thunderbolt or USB 3.1 options. This wouldn't be as troubling if my 9-5 editing position didn't rely on Thunderbolt work drives. I was hoping to use the Mac Pro to rip through my full time work, leaving me more time to pursue freelance stuff and potentially have a machine that would carry me for several years as a freelancer. But I'm thinking that this machine is sort of a lame duck, with plenty of processing power but limited ports that will soon make it impractical once thunderbolt and the new USB interfaces become the standard.

Does anyone have any opinions or advice on this? Many thanks.

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5), null

Posted on May 6, 2015 11:55 AM

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Answer 1

Johnb-one

Level 6

9,156 points

May 6, 2015 12:23 PM in response to ATW117

well...quack quack quack... must be duck season (nope, wabbit season, nope duck season...fire) {sorry bad joke there}

I have a 2010 Mac pro which doesn't have Thunderbolt or USB 3 and it wasn't a deal-breaker for me. USB 3 is backwards compatible with USB 2 so that's you covered on that. As for Thunderbolt, there are no add-on cards. The technology for that has to be built right into the logic board from the get-go. That could be a challenge. I don't think Thunderbolt is a 2 way street, but I'm not sure about that. I do know that there are Thunderbolt breakout boxes which will allow you to connect all kinds of things from a Thunderbolt port but I don't know if you can connect those things to the breakout box and then to the Thunderbolt port...hmmm... questions question, not many answers on this end. Are you sure the work drives of which you speak don't have any other interfaces on them ? Are they Thunderbolt only?

sorry, my crystal ball has gone dark

John B

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Answer 2

May 6, 2015 12:43 PM in response to ATW117

You can't add ThunderBolt to a silver tower Mac Pro.

But there are several options for USB-3 add-on cards for a PCI-e slot.

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Answer 3

ATW117 Author

Level 1

4 points

May 6, 2015 12:44 PM in response to Johnb-one

There definitely is a lot to absorb on this topic. Backwards compatibility is key, but I'm also concerned with most current data speed capabilities. Being able to use a 3.0 or 3.1 drive is great, it would be better to use it at max read/write speed. Maybe I'm being greedy.

The drives are thunderbolt only! I considered using drives with USB 3 and Thunderbolt ports mixed into the daisy chain, but at least the portable drives can only have one port active at a time.

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Answer 4

ATW117 Author

Level 1

4 points

May 6, 2015 12:46 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

The Mac I purchased did come with USB 3.0 ports installed, but I've been reading about 3.1, which apparently requires special hardware support.

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