1-2 of 2 Answers
It will run at 5Gbps over the USB 3.0 ports on your Mac. It cannot connect to a Thunderbolt 2 port. It will still be really fast with up to 400-500MB/s transfer speeds with USB 3.0. Definitely worth picking up.
Sorry, there was a problem. Please try again later.Your internal disk is fast on this model of MacBook Pro. I realize you may not want to use the internal disk to play games or video editing. You are right...USB 3 and thunderbolt 2...and you're wanting to take advantage of usb3.2 gen2. You can not get so much performance out of a built-in usb3 but you can out of TB 2. So consider an adapter to go towards the direction you desire. The TB 2 offers plenty of speed (throughput on disk reads and writes). It would be my choice to start using the TB 2 ports. Consider an adapter or a dock. Keep in mind that Apple sells a TB2 to TB3 adapter. This will allow you to connect a current and not used TB 3 dock or adapter and get some more performance out of the 5 yo MacBook. Realistic has to be your attitude as you have max 20gbs on thunderbolt 2 and 40gbs on TB3. My point here is that start using the TB2 interface on MacBook....and not only one cable along with MagSafe 2 charge and you have ports galore to play with including a USB c (3.2 gen2 10gbps ). The ports you gain depends on what dock or what adapter you buy. You are going to see the increased performance and your limits will be, to start with the TB2 port and its bandwidth on the MacBook. This may make sense to give you some growth options and keep what you have in MacBook and have some future-proofing of ports to use on your next computer. Use a disk speed test program to give you reference points on what you have gained and you can relate to what you see on reviews and such on what you end up buying
I would recommend:
Sorry, there was a problem. Please try again later.