Using Target Disk Mode over FireWire 800, we averaged 40MB/s reads and 38MB/s writes which equates to about 40% of the full capability of the FireWire 800 interface – as is typical with either an SSD or a hard drive in this situation.Ĭlearly there is some overhead in supporting Target Disk Mode.īy our logic, we figured that since Thunderbolt has a theoretical maximum data transfer rate of 1250MB/s we expected to see about 40% of that speed, or 500MB/s (which our SSD itself is capable of internally – see benchmark below). In real life, peak rates typically are just below 90MB/s. The FireWire 800 interface theoretically transfers data up to 100MB/s. What we found, however, was a modest gain in performance. When we attached that to our 2011 Thunderbolt port equipped 27″ iMac via Apple’s Thunderbolt Cable in Target Disk Mode, we were expecting to get blown away by the raw data transfer rate.įinally an external interface that wouldn’t bottleneck the 6Gb/s performance threshold of the drive. We decided to go for the gusto in our first test and installed a 240GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD into the Main bay of our 2011 Thunderbolt port equipped 13-inch MacBook Pro.

Logically, sure! Target disk mode allows one Mac with FireWire (or now with Thunderbolt) to be used as an external hard disk connected to another computer. “Could I use a new 2011 Macbook Pro in Target Disk Mode over Thunderbolt? Wouldn’t it act just like an external hard drive enclosure?” The first question we aimed to tackle came from Jay: Now that the cables were available – we had to get our hands on a few to start answering the questions we’ve received in detail. Interestingly enough, no thunderbolt cables were even available until earlier this week when Apple started offering the Promise Technology Pegasus R4 & R6 RAID solutions. Several weeks ago when Apple released the first Thunderbolt-equipped Mac, the questions started pouring in on how quickly we’d be able to see the benefits of blazing external speeds.

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