Maxx Digital Mobile Red Rocket enclosure

[Eric Hales]

Does anyone know if there is a way to make any of the current or recent generation macbooks or imacs work with this enclosure? http://www.maxxdigital.com/mobile-rocket-red-rocket.html. I bought the enclosure used but then realized I can't use it because my macbook pro retina doesn't have a pci slot to connect it.

 

[Shiblon Wixom]

You would have to buy a sonnet SxS to TB adapter, in order to use that product, and it would be limited to a single x1 pci-e lane vs the x4 pci-e lanes of TB.

 

[Eric Hales]

Yeah I asked Maxx Digital customer support if a SxS to TB adapter would work and he said it may but from their experiences it doesn't usually reliably work and recommended I would be better off buying their newer TB2 enclosure instead, which of course is a lot more expensive.

 

[Shiblon Wixom]

At this point there are a lot of options, so it depends on what your needs are and the equipment you have on hand. The old maxx mobile rocket case is great if you have an old 17" or 15" Macbook Pro with an express card slot but without TB, but if you have TB then there are much better options, especially for the Red Rocket or Rocket-X.

If you run the old Red Rocket in that pci-e x1 case, it will work but at half speed, and the Rocket-X would be at a fraction of its full speed.

 

[ericyoung]

The Sonnet TB to ExpressCard/34 and SxS Memory Card Reader that Shiblon mentions does work with Maxx Digital Mobile Red Rocket enclosure and the original Red Rocket & Mountain Lion 10.8.5 which I use, but it does have the single x1 pci-e lane limitation of the ExpressCard/34 interface of the Maxx Digital Mobile Red Rocket enclosure. But at least Thunderbolt isn't restricting it any further.