no thunderbolt hard drive enclosures?

[robfilms]

i have naked 3.5 hard drives that i want to sleeve within a thunderbolt enclosure so i can wire it to my editor's speedy thunderbolt port as we cut video/digital media in fcp.

unfortunately, i cannot find empty thunderbolt enclosures anywhere-not at newegg or even owc.

what gives?

thunderbolt has been out well over a year.

there are generic thunderbolt cables.

where are the thunderbolt enclosures?

be well.

rob

ps-sorry for the whiney tone. i didn't sleep well last night! :damnyou:

[Catzilla]

That is strange, I did find a 2.5, that's not going to help you.

[Ken Sp.]

I think I read here, at one time, that thunderbolt is a bit overkill. FireWire 800 would completely saturate the drive speed, unless you're using an SSD.

[Fritz]

tbolt is wholly poorly supported anywhere other than apple cables for $40.
no hub promised by 3 different vendors 2 years ago.
just a couple of pci frames.

[MGS_forgot_password]

Apple should just support eSATA like everybody else.

[C(-)ris]

MGS_forgot_password wrote: Apple should just support eSATA like everybody else.

The problem with eSATA is that it isn't reliably hot swapable. It is fine for permanent disks and large external drives. But it isn't useful for all my small portables. Plus you need an extra power brick to use it.

[Robert M]

C(-)ris,

These are non-issues and definitely do not outweigh the benefits provided by esata. Actually, they’re pretty much business as usual for me. Nearly all of my drives require ac adapters and I always power down drives prior to disconnecting them. Stems from the days of SCSI drives and ADB devices.

Robert


> The problem with eSATA is that it isn't reliably hot swapable. It
> is fine for permanent disks and large external drives. But it
> isn't useful for all my small portables. Plus you need an extra
> power brick to use it.

[TheTominator]

Ken Sp. is right that using thunderbolt is only popular so far with enclosures that do something to make better use of the speed of Thunderbolt. SSD's are not yet commonly available in 3.5" form factor so thundrbolt enclosures house multiple 3.5" drives.


External thunderbolt hard drive enclosures:

Drobo 5 drive enclosure for 3.5" drives

Drobo 4 drive enclosure for 2.5" drives

Pegasus RAID with 4 drives

[C(-)ris]

TheTominator wrote:
Ken Sp. is right that using thunderbolt is only popular so far with enclosures that do something to make better use of the speed of Thunderbolt. SSD's are not yet commonly available in 3.5" form factor so thundrbolt enclosures house multiple 3.5" drives.


External thunderbolt hard drive enclosures:

Drobo 5 drive enclosure for 3.5" drives

Drobo 4 drive enclosure for 2.5" drives

Pegasus RAID with 4 drives

I can personally attest that the Pegasus RAID is crazy fast over Thunderbolt. Throw that on a Mac Mini with an SSD boot drive and you will be amazed.

[C(-)ris]

Robert M wrote:
C(-)ris,

These are non-issues and definitely do not outweigh the benefits provided by esata. Actually, they’re pretty much business as usual for me. Nearly all of my drives require ac adapters and I always power down drives prior to disconnecting them. Stems from the days of SCSI drives and ADB devices.

Robert


> The problem with eSATA is that it isn't reliably hot swapable. It
> is fine for permanent disks and large external drives. But it
> isn't useful for all my small portables. Plus you need an extra
> power brick to use it.

I don't think that those are non-issues for everyone. I personally would be very unhappy if I had to deal with a dozen power bricks for my drives. None of my 12 externals require power bricks when used via USB or FW. The cable mess would be horrible as they are not all the same brand. Also, I rarely restart my computer, if I had to do so every time I wanted to swap drives it would be a nightmare and simple tasks would take much longer.