If you want to future-proof with a Thunderbolt 3 PCIe enclosure, it needs to be one such as the Akitio Node Lite with a chip that Apple supports. Slower than SATA? Seriously Murphy? Akitio Neither was I expecting the 350 MBps reading and writing that the Node Lite/Intel 750 combo initially delivered on my iMac. Nice, but I certainly wasn’t expecting the same results on a Thunderbolt 1 port, with an adapter, and older 2nd generation Intel CPU in play. In my testing for PCWorld’s Akitio Thunder3 PCIe review with a 1.2TB Intel 750 NVMe PCIe SSD inside, the combo read at about 2 GBps and wrote at well over 1 GBps. And there’s only a minor performance penalty with the adapter. Also, Thunderbolt is the future and performs much better on newer Macs. The issue here is that many Thunderbolt 2 boxes are reaching end of life. It’s completely compatible with Thunderbolt and Thunderbolt 2 Macs. I should point out that I could’ve avoided all this with the Akitio Thunder2 PCIe, which I later acquired for testing. Akitioįinally, Akitio sent a Node Lite which uses TI’s newer 65983 (as does Akitio’s Node Pro) chip that Apple does support, and I was sure that NVMe bliss was nearly upon me. IDGĪpple doesn’t support the communications chip sported in many early NVMe PCIe enclosures such as the Thunder3 PCIe shown below. Any enclosure using this chip with throw the message you see below.
![how to manage external storage for imac enclosure how to manage external storage for imac enclosure](https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/H08dcc6537a204f4488ac4826f0887f3aN/ORICO-M2-NVMe-Case-Self-Cooling-SSD-Enclosure-for-M-2-M-Key-M-B-Key.jpg)
#How to manage external storage for imac enclosure windows#
The early-to-market models I tried initially-the aforementioned Aktio Thunder3 PCIe and Akitio Node-work fine on Windows PCs, but they use TI’s 65982 communications chip, which predates Apple’s adoption of Thunderbolt 3. This adapter is fine for connecting Thunderbolt 2 devices to Thunderbolt 3 ports, but won’t work the other way around.Īfter the Apple adapter was in place, the next issue was Thunderbolt PCIe enclosure compatibility. The bi-directional Apple adapter does both. This experiment was the exact opposite, a Thunderbolt 3 device to a Thunderbolt 1 port.
![how to manage external storage for imac enclosure how to manage external storage for imac enclosure](https://www.cultofmac.com/ezoimgfmt/cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/96ADCB6E-0F9D-4158-BE0D-DF6C7036E034-1536x864.jpeg)
The $50 units from Akitio and Startech I tried initially were uni-directional in the wrong direction-they would only handle Thunderbolt 1 or 2 devices attached to a Thunderbolt 3 port. At the time of this writing, Apple’s Thunderbolt adapter was the only one available that allows you to successfully use Thunderbolt 3 devices on a Thunderbolt 1 or 2 port.