What do my fellow filmmakers do about USB C?

[Mads Nybo jørgensen]

Hey Chris,

Although they look the same connection wise, have you checked whether your USB-C drive could be a Thunderbolt Drive?

There are a few companies around offering break-out boxes.
For a little while I’ve had my eyes on the OWC Thunderbolt Hub for my Mac Mini, but have not yet ordered it. It supports both USB-C and Thunderbolt (currently in stock with scan.co.uk in the UK):
https://www.owc.com/solutions/thunderbolt-hub

There are plenty of other brands around doing the same.
Some which has bigger selection of connections + card-reader built in.
What is worth keeping an eye on, whatever you choose, is the data throughput on the ports.

Hope that this helps?

Atb
Mads

[Chris Newberry]

Thank you Mads – I shall check out right away.

Is Thunderbolt and USBC interchangable? My HDDs are defo USBC, but they work in the iMac , so if the Thunderbolt iMac sockets accept USBC connections, then your mentioned devices could help

[Ben Balser]

Bear in mind that Thunderbolt is faster, but both sides of the cable must support it for that speed increase. Otherwise, you’re running USB-C.

[Mads Nybo jørgensen]

Hey Chris,

I am mainly working on a HP ZBook Pro with USBC Thunderbolt ports.
I don’t really notice whether my external device are USB or Thunderbolt, as the USBC interface is fast enough for most of the work that I do.
Adding, that for editing I use my internal SSD’s, and rarely connect to an external drive unless it is for backing up or moving a project back into Post.

Rather than getting stuck on one or the other, I think that your main point is that Mac has a limited amount of ports, without the ability to expand the hardware. Adding, that if you are really unlucky and don’t “eject” your drive before unplugging, you can run the risk of losing data.

So having all your drives connected to a break-out box might not be a bad thing, regardless of being USBC only, or with Thunderbolt.

However, there are smarter people around here, including Bob Zelin, who will rightfully ask about your back-up and disaster recovery. As if you have all your eggs in one basket, or sitting on one connection as it would be, they could all fail spectacularly simultaneously.

[Chris Newberry]

Excellent point – thank you

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Your iMac USB-C port is actually a Thunderbolt 3 port.

The USB drives you have, if they are portable drives, then they will top out at about 120 MB/sec, and if they are desktop drives, then they may go up to 200 MB/sec or more depending on model.

You do get USB-C to 4-port hubs where the USB ports are USB-A USB 3.0 ports, so, totally about 600 MB/sec shared between 4 ports.

If you connect 4 portable drives via USB-A to USB-C cables to this kind of a hub, you’ll still see full speed on all 4 drives. Even if you connect 4 desktop drives to this hub, you’ll still see full speed on all 4 drives as long as not more than 2 drives are simultaneously reading or writing.

If you need even more speed or of any of your USB-C devices are SSDs or RAIDs, then you can look at getting a Thunderbolt to USB hub. Caldigit, Sonnet, and OWC make them.

[Chris Newberry]

Thank you Neil – this is really helpful!! I appreciate you time

[Chris Newberry]

Thank you Ben – most helpful

[Mark Grance]

It should be noted that USB C is only referring to the connector’s form factor and not the speed. USB speed is referenced in numbers like USB 2.0, USB 3.0, USB 3.1 or 3.2 Gen 1, etc.

I know it sounds like I am nitpicking but there are USB cables (with USB C connectors) out there that are not high speed.

If you have a lot of “USB C” cables in your collection, I recommend you take the time to test them one at a time directly connected from the computer to a drive and use something like AJA System Test Light or Blackmagic Disk Speed Test to verify the performance of the cables. I found “USB C” cables that are as slow as USB 2.0.

Also, just because a drive has a USB C connector doesn’t make it fast.