Thunderbolt hubs?

[huzzam]

Hi--

Is there any such thing as a Thunderbolt hub, such that you can plug one cable into your computer, and connect more than one TB device to the other end? Like you can with a USB hub for example. I searched & found all these docking stations which give you USB & Firewire ports and such, but none that allow multiple TB devices. I ask because I'm looking at TB SSDs to add for external storage, but most don't have a second "passthrough" TB port. And I'm on a Macbook Air with only one TB port...

thanks
~peter in thessaloniki

[John_Toolbox]

I've never seen this, I'm not sure if it's technically possible or not. But your best bet is to get one external thunderbolt enclosure that can hold multiple drives, rather than several small enclosures that only hold one drive.

[nst7]

Here are 2 hubs with dual Thunderbolt ports:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/CalDigit/TSUS60/

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Belkin/F4U055WW/

Here is a dual drive enclosure with 2 ports:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thund...lite-Dual-RAID

And a 4 drive enclosure:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thund.../ThunderBay-IV

And a PCIe to Thunderbolt chassis (which can house PCIe SSD's) with 2 ports:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thund...ercury_Helios/

There's also this combination driver enclosure and dock (if they ever get around to releasing it):

http://sonnettech.com/product/echo15...rboltdock.html


Note that with Thunderbolt, you can daisy chain up to 6 devices off one port.

[Craig F]

Thunderbolt can chain, 2 ports (1 in, 1 out) and these can tap to other protocols (USB, FW, SATA/eSATA)
Thunderbolt can not hub 1 in, 2+ out or so I've read in my research for one

[StratoBobster]

For what it's worth, I've been using this one from Lacie to run my existing eSATA drives off the Thunderbolt port of my iMac. It has 2 Thunderbolt ports to allow daisy-chaining.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Lacie...FYVafgodGGgASA

[fsrenduro]

I'm using the Caldigit one from Macsales

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/CalDigit/TSUS60/

It has 2 TB ports. Since I have a Mac Mini and a Native TB system I needed more than on TB port. The Caldigit uses one port to connect to my Mac Mini and the other for my TB Native box.

How it helps though is because it provides an extra HDMI port. So now I have an HDMI port on the Mini and one on the Caldigit (2 monitors). Before I would use my TB port on the Mini for a second monitor. Without this option the TB Native box would prevent me from running a second monitor.

[huzzam]

Thanks all. A device with two ports doesn't really help, I need at least 3 on one device, in order to *add* more ports. Like a Firewire hub does, or a USB hub. I understand about daisy chaining, but many of the small TB drives (as well as many of the new enclosures I've seen coming out) only have one port, so daisy chaining stops there. All fine if you have two+ TB ports to start with, but the MBA doesn't.

Craig, seems like you've already done this research. It's a shame that so many manufacturers are treating TB like USB, if in fact "multiplier" hubs aren't actually possible. I worry that as they target Mac Pros (which have an abundance of TB), they'll forget all about us little guys...

I guess I'll just have to vote with my dollars for those devices which do have (at least) two ports.

thanks!

[nst7]

I'm not sure why it makes a difference between daisy chaining or using multiple ports on one unit.

Between the various units mentioned, as long as each unit has 2 Thunderbolt ports, you can daisy chain up to 6 units, which is going to be exactly the same as one Thunderbolt hub with 6 inputs.

[Craig F]

Convenience, if you want/need to remove something other than the last unit in the chain
If it came off of a hub you only need to deal with the unit you want to remove, and then there are the units that do not have the pass through

[John_Toolbox]

Why do the SSDs need to be thunderbolt? I'm not aware of any external SSDs that exceed the limitations of Sata III. If you use eSATA SSDs, you could have a hub-like functionality and still have thunderbolt passthrough using something like this:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...=REG&A=details

If you want more than 2 eSATA ports, you could get more of these, or get a thunderbolt to PCIe chassis and put a 4-port eSATA card in it.