"Practice Safe Thunderbolt"

[Prime Mover]

Maybe I'm late to the party, but it seems confusing, so I thought I'd drop a warning.

Until yesterday, I didn't know that USB-C cables and officially branded Thunderbolt3 cables are different. THEY ARE! They have entirely different power and bandwidth ratings. Using a USB-C cable on something like a drive that's designed to be TB can harm the device and cause disconnections. I figured it was just a way for Intel/Apple to make money, because they use the same jacks and look identical, but no, don't interchange USB-C and TB3 cables!

This actually caused me weeks of problems with a new RAID5 array I was setting up, huge sucker. 8-days just to certify the drives as okay to use. It kept dropping every 24 hours or so and screwing up my tests. I had no idea it was the cable. Did a little reading and yes, they're two very different things. Figure them being a similar situation as 1/4" line cables vs speaker cables.

[dix]

Thanks for posting. I had no idea! For better or worse, remaining on a 5,1 cMP has spared me from having to know very much about USB-C, Thunderbolt and any other pipes invented after 2009. But the day will come soon, and I'll need to get up to speed.

Here's an article I came across, just today, that lays out the various modern cabling options that might be helpful. https://ask.audio/articles/usb-past-pre ... 2oDnobQwDE