I'm a video producer by trade, and USB3 handles 1080p HD just fine. I use a thunderbolt G drive at work, and USB 3 at home and I don't notice any performance difference in premiere. There's a bump in file transfer speeds, but I'm moving massive files so rarely that it's not worth the cost.

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The only reason I have the thunderbolt drive at work is because I can daisy chain them with my second display. If you don't need the connectivity, even if you are producing 1080p HD video, USB3 will get you there for much less money. Mar 11th, 2015 11:24 amNot a mac person but did use hackintosh for awhile, but don't macs have usb ports as well as their proprietary ports? Also would a cheap thunderbolt to male usb (are there not 3.0 as well?) cord not work with a female to male 3.0 usb extension? Thunderbolt isn't proprietary.

It's a standard by Intel, essentially externally hot-pluggable PCI-E. There are motherboards that have it.

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And your adapter idea would still limit speeds to USB 3.0 (PCI-E - USB 3.0 - SATA). Thunderbolt is much faster since it can send over native SATA (PCI-E - SATA). The power persists Thunderbolt isn’t dead and USB-C doesn’t look like it’s going to kill it off soon. Indeed, it seems likely that USB-C will wind up replacing ports on consumer-leaning Macs, like future MacBooks (if 12-inch isn’t the only model), Mac minis, and iMacs, while the Mac Pro and MacBook Pro will probably retain Thunderbolt for the highest performance with external drives and other peripherals. If you’re dead set on buying a USB-C machine, make sure you know what you’re getting into—especially if you use your laptop as a fully appointed portable workstation like I do.

Before ordering, you need to make sure the particular multi-prong adapters you’ll need are available, compatible, and affordable. Good value for people with 2011 iMac who are afraid to disassemble it to install an internal SSD. 2011 does not have USB 3.0, but does have thunderbolt. Thunderbolt drives are bootable on the iMac. I wish this seagate drive had a TB daisy chain ability though.

• Allows you to connect any Mac OS X based computer to various legacy host systems. Kermit ford motor co. • HotVT allows access to host data as a separate application or by opening a terminal emulation session through the Microsoft IE4/5/6 browser. The following features are supported: HTML Control Center to configure and launch sessions (IE profile only).

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The other option for fast external storage is to use a Kanex or Startech Thunderbolt to USB 3.0/esata adapters, with a USB 3.0 hdd attached (however this method is not bootable.) I'm on the fence on this item as a 2011 iMac owner. It's a nice device if you must have a thunderbolt HDD/SSD. If you do not need to boot from the external drive, you might as well stick with USB drives. Thunderbolt docs are stupidly expensive. I'd love if someone made an affordable TBUSB 3.0 adapter that had multiple TB ports and USB ports. That's all I want.