RED Station via Firewire Thunderbolt adapter

[Jean Déraps]

1] Does the RED Station work using the Apple Thunderbolt to FireWire Adapter?

2] If so, is it faster than just using Firewire (RED Station) to Firewire on computer?

Many thanks

Jean

 

[Michael Romano]

Even if it works, which it should, it would unlikely be any faster than a direct connect. FW800 is a smaller pipe than TB.

 

[Bob Gundu]

USB3 if you have it is way faster.

 

[Jean Déraps]

I realize that FW800 is slower than Thunderbolt...it's just that sometimes the implementations are more or less efficient.
I just did FW800 tests on my MacPro (2008) and MacBookPro (2011) and got different results:

MacPro (2008) : Read: 82.4 Write: 75.1 MB/s

MacBookPro (2011): Read: 81.6 Write: 64.9 MB/s

I can get about 100 MB/s reads using eSATA.

My dream is that perhaps I can gain some speed using Thunderbolt, if the limiting factor is indeed the FW800 port on the mac rather than on the RED station....

 

[Jean Déraps]

My MacBook Pro is unfortunately pre USB 3 (and so is the RED Station I have....)

 

[ericyoung]

Get two Lacie eSATA Thunderbolt Hubs. Daisy chain them to get four eSATA and three TB connections, although relying on a single TB for all my connectivity makes me nervous!
http://www.storagereview.com/lacie_esata_hub_thunderbolt_series_review

Voilá eSATA in from Red Station, two eSATA out to destination drives. That's what I'm planning to do, but haven't tested it yet.

TB is rubbish from the point of view of availability of a large market of competing TB accessories at low prices.
It sucks no one does a super compact TB hub with three or more loop outs, and the cost of them and the cables are horrible coming from the cost of Expresscard34 peripherals.

And needing more cables and boxes just to provide a couple more connectors feels like a step backwards in portability. Hey ho!

This also shows that us power users can easily saturate TB1 or even TB2 - so TB is not a substitute for motherboard slots or multiple built in fast connectivity. I'm looking at you Apple!!

 

[Jean Déraps]

Eric, it would cost some 500$ in devices and cables to implement this.... you're right that it's rubbish at this point in time to have to jump through so many expensive hoops to get this to happen.

 

[ericyoung]

I Ebayed the hell out of it, and managed to reduce the cost somewhat with half price second hand cables, and 20% off the hubs.