Question Thunderbolt 3 to my PC

[neverknowu]

Hello,
I often get thunderbolt 3 drives from my clients (freelance video vfx) and my PC does not have a TB3 card. I tried to connect the Asus ThunderboltEX card...that was frustrating and never worked. Anyway, I can connect the drive to my MacBook pro, and then connect my PC to that via my local network. So is there a way to get Thunderbolt 3 drives connected directly to my network that will then connect to my PC? I'm looking at the Akitio or the QNAP TB3 to 10gpe adapters...is that what I need? Is it possible? I tried a regular TB3 to ethernet adapter that I have from Belkin to my ethernet switch, and that didn't work. The drive didn't 'light up' like it was working.

 

[k1114]

You need a pcie tb3 add in card like the asus card so you need to figure out how to get that to work. All the other things you are looking at are for plugging into a pc with tb3. The adapters will not work both ways. Tb3 to ethernet is not ethernet to tb3.

 

[richiestang_78]

Agreed.


What issues were you having?

 

[neverknowu]

You need a pcie tb3 add in card like the asus card so you need to figure out how to get that to work. All the other things you are looking at are for plugging into a pc with tb3. The adapters will not work both ways. Tb3 to ethernet is not ethernet to tb3.

Yeah, that add-in card just did not work. I tried multiple ways of installing, and after 2 days I threw it away.

Darn. I just find it weird that there's no off-board converter/adapter, no?

 

[k1114]

Tb3 gets it's bandwidth by using pcie and pcie can only be had from pcie. You can get any other data protocol from pcie but you can't get pcie from any other protocol. That's why you can find usb/firewire/ethernet/anything out of a pcie card but you will not find a single product that converts to a pcie using port unless it uses pcie itself (which only includes expresscard, m.2, and tb).