KANEX Thunderbolt to eSATA with USB 3.0 Adapter

Mac Mini Server mid 2011 SSD main boot disk.Works extremely well on eSATA with a very fast transfer rate. Applied an EasyAcc USB 3.0 hub to the USB port and attached an SSD. Transfer from SSD disk, of a 720mb file to an attached USB 3 external SSD disk, did not even register the time delay/time taken. It just appeared as a copied file in what looked like under one second.Attaching a USB 2.0 external drive, via the USB 3.0 hub... well something went wrong. The external disk did not appear on on the attached disks list. Tried another two similar external USB 2.0 attached disks and got the same result. Power light looked OK on the external disk housing but nothing showing in Finder etc. Direct connection to main board USB 2.0 ports would normally show these disks.It might be a problem of the USB 3.0 hub, or a standards problem with the USB 2.0 external disk adaptors. I cut out the hub and went direct USB 2.0 external disk to USB 3.0 port and this still gave the same result, nothing appearing.I do not think that this problem is a result of this KANEX adaptor. The USB 2.0 external hard disk adaptors were of poorer quality/brand. I next used a USB 3.0 external box from ICY BOX and they are good at what they do. It worked instantly.Another USB 2.0 external disk drive worked. So I have three poor quality external disk drive housing that are faulted when connected to USB 3.0 but one ICY BOX external 3.0 adaptor that is just fantastic.Go with reputable equipment and this adaptor is extremely good.I do not think that you could go any faster in your disk transfers if you did eSATA SSD attached disk and SSD from your main machine.Lower quality, or slow, attached disk products give problems in El Capitan so my best advice is to purchase the best quality and this is one of them.

I got this so I could modernise my mid-2011 iMac which only has USB 2 ports and a Thunderbolt 2 port. I must have spent hours researching Amazon and the internet for a simple adapter for the now redundant Thunderbolt 2 so I could take advantage of the much higher speeds.I settled on this one which gives a USB 3 (A) port and a SATA 3 port. It's quite an eye-watering amount of money for what is basically a cable adaptor, but I put this down to supply and demand as Thunderbolt 2 is a now redundant standard. The high price if offset when you consider how much it costs to get a new iMac!On performance, this is exactly what I was looking for. I use this with an SSD external hard drive, and I get approximately 10 times faster speeds than my previous setup which was a HDD via USB 2.So if you work with audio or video production, this will instantly upgrade your old Mac to a modern standard. (In fact I also replaced my internal HDD boot drive with an SSD, so now the machine is super fast. It's like having a brand new iMac for a couple of hundred quid!).The cable for this unit is fixed and is quite short. It's so short in fact I have to sit it up on an old box to level it with the port so I don't put strain on it, but this isn't a problem and it's behind the Mac so you can't really see it.I'm keeping my eye out for a SATA 3 to USB C adaptor or hub, so that I could also take advantage of the extra port and add USB C peripherals.In conclusion, really happy. A hundred quid has saved me hundreds on getting a new Mac which would essentially be the same spec.

This really does work. I timed it as 9 times faster than my USB2 and about the same as thunderbolt. I daisy-chained it from my 6TB La Cie external working drive with no problem and backed up 3TB of movie files to an external storage HD. It took a bit over 4 hours, would have taken a day and a half with USB2! It would be fast enough to use it as a working video drive for NL editing. Using it on an iMac with Thunderbolt but no USB 3, so perfect solution. Instead of having to buy expensive Thunderbolt drives, I can now use much cheaper USB 3 external drives for storage. Only 4 stars so far as I have only had it a few days and don't know about build quality. No reason to suspect it won't last, who knows, but it has already saved me money.