? Where are the cables or adapters for the older Thunderbolt 1/2 to Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) ports?

[pm-r]

As the title says and I can't believe I could not find anything affordable with my Google searching and can't believe there is no other cable or device other than Apples $60+ CDN Apple A1790 Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3 Adapter.

I have purchased 2020 27-in I9 5K Retina iMac to replace my 2011 27in iMac and I wanted to continue using my external Buffalo Ministation Thunderbolt hard drive which currently I have connected to my 2011 iMac via Thunderbolt 2 cable.

So after waiting through all the confusion of USB firewire Thunderbolt and all the various connectors that the industry seems to have completely screwed up to make it almost impossible to find something that will work.

I was hoping there would be a nice compatible cable at a reasonable price with Thunderbolt 2 connections at one end and Thunderbolt 3/4 (USB-C) at the other that could transfer data at at least fairly close to the supported data rate.

If anyone knows of such an existing cable or adapter has a decent price I would appreciate knowing about it. I couldn't even find a used Apple adapter as a decent price on eBay or others Marketplace web pages, at least not on the price I wanted to pay.

Something Chinese sites had an adapter as an affordable price but the contact seller wouldn't work to ask them if it was compatible with data as some adapters apparently are not. I believe they are for video only and not data with some sites point out but others don't. So the cheap price of those that don't I haven't bothered with as I cannot ask the seller.

Any constructive suggestions welcome. Thanks.




- Patrick
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[MacInWin]

I was hoping there would be a nice compatible cable at a reasonable price with Thunderbolt 2 connections at one end and Thunderbolt 3/4 (USB-C) at the other that could transfer data at at least fairly close to the supported data rate.

What do you mean by "supported data rate?" No cable will allow any greater speed than the port on the iMac itself, which was rated at TB2 speeds of max 40 Gbps or the drive, which according to what I could find, has a max of 10 Gbps, so that's the limit of this connection. I don't know of any cable or connector that supports 10 Gbps data transfer between TB2 and TB3/4. However, the other port on the Buffalo drive is USB and suports up to 5Gbps. The connection there are Micro B to USB3/4 connectors like this one:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BG1RF2CV/?tag=macforums0e4-20


it claims 10 Gbps, so it should handle the drive's 5Gbps output reasonably well.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

I was hoping there would be a nice compatible cable at a reasonable price with Thunderbolt 2 connections at one end and Thunderbolt 3/4 (USB-C) at the other that could transfer data at at least fairly close to the supported data rate.

We've had this dicussion at least a couple of times previously here on Mac-Forums. TB2 was never a popular standard. A number of companies advertised that they would be coming out with adapters, and then they never did. Most Macs that had TB2 also had USB 2 interfaces, and that's what most folks used to connect external hard drives. There were very few TB2 monitors made, and they mostly came from Apple. I've never seen a TB2 to TB3 adapter other than Apple's and a couple of expensive docking stations.