USB3 extSSD over Thunderbolt 2 cable ?

[lass00]

I have an old computer that only has USB2 interfaces, however its saving grace is first generation Thunderbolt ports. From this I am able to utilise an SSD externally to keep the system relevant.

However, any USB3 SSDs are throttled at punishingly slow USB2 speeds. This is where I was hoping that Apple's Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter, which is described as being bi-directional, could help circumvent those old interfaces.

Can anybody confirm if a USB3 external SSD could be read and written to via this cable from a Thunderbolt 1 port (which should be backwards compatible with Thunderbolt 2).

cable: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MMEL2AM/A/thunderbolt-3-usb-c-to-thunderbolt-2-adapter

 

[MacsBug]

I just tested this and it does not work. Apples page states that "As a bidirectional adapter, it can also connect new Thunderbolt 3 devices to a Mac with a Thunderbolt or Thunderbolt 2 port and macOS Sierra or later."

Unfortunately it does not work with SSD's. I tried this on a 2012 Mac mini with several different SSD's I tried, both USB-c SSD's and 2 different thunderbolt 3 SSD's. None of the drives showed up on the Mac Desktop, and the System profiler did not see anything conected to the Thunderbolt port. My guess is that the device needs its own power supply.

Best bet is to find a Thunderbolt dock. Only caveat this is that if I am remembering correctly, you cannot boot from a drive connected to a thunderbolt dock., but this may have been fixed in later OS's.

 

[TonyAguila]

I have an old computer that only has USB2 interfaces, however its saving grace is first generation Thunderbolt ports. From this I am able to utilise an SSD externally to keep the system relevant.

However, any USB3 SSDs are throttled at punishingly slow USB2 speeds. This is where I was hoping that Apple's Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter, which is described as being bi-directional, could help circumvent those old interfaces.

Can anybody confirm if a USB3 external SSD could be read and written to via this cable from a Thunderbolt 1 port (which should be backwards compatible with Thunderbolt 2).

cable: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MMEL2AM/A/thunderbolt-3-usb-c-to-thunderbolt-2-adapter

I have a Sabrent USB 3.1 SATA drive adapter that works for connecting either a hard drive or SSD (SATA, of course) to my M1 Mac Studio with no problem. It will connect either to my CalDigit Thunderbolt 4 Element Hub or to my atolla 7-Port USB 3.0 Hub and allows external booting from either hard drive or SSD. I tested a Samsung 850 EVO SATA SSD and it works with either interface (CalDigit/Thunderbolt 4) or (atolla USB3) and can boot as external macOS systems.

The Samsung SSD does not feel slow at all, connected this way. I suggest getting this adapter from Amazon (about $15 right now) and if it does not work for you, you can easily return it for a full discount. To check and see if the speed of this interface is really “punishingly slow,” I ran speed tests on different drives.

The 850EVO SSD averaged reads of 381 MBs and writes of 454 MBs when connected to the USB hub, and 472/477 MBs connected to the Thunderbolt 4 CalDigit hub.

In comparison, a Seagate 8TB hard drive ran 251/242 MBs, and still did not “feel” slow.

My 4TB Crucial SATA SSD in my external Thunderbolt 3 enclosure, ran 394/360 MBs.

My external NVME 4TB Western Digital SN850 SSD gave back 3,122/2,847 MBs and the internal Apple 2TB SSD ran 6,942/6,507 MBs. Of course, this performance was achieved from the dual-chip SSDs in the Mac. Anyway, the 300–400 megabytes per second from the SATA SSD is not slow at all. Unfortunately, I don’t have an older Mac with less than USB3 to test it with. Just try the Sabrent without any other adapter. Just connect it to an open USB port. If it does not work, you can simply return it.

 

[lass00]

Thanks MacsBug, but I was too late to read your post as I ordered one. It arrived today and I shall be sending it strait back, after trying it out myself.

I rung Apple's tech support beforehand and was put through to somebody who sounded like they knew what they were talking about, this after having read the online literature and they confirmed to me that power could be fed through the Thunderbolt cable capable enough of powering an external NMVe SSD, just not a MacBook (for charging).

This was not the case.