Daisy chaining a Thunderbolt 3 hard drive to a Thunderbolt 2 hard drive

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Daisy chaining a Thunderbolt 3 hard drive to a Thunderbolt 2 hard drive

Hi there.

I am looking to aisy chain a Thunderbolt 3 (TB3) hard drive to a Thunderbolt 2 (TB2) hard drive (from my M2 MBP) and wanted to know if this is possible. Both hard drives are powered by mains adapter.

My setup would be as follows: MBP connected to the Thunderbolt 3 hard drive (with thunderbolt 3 cable), then from the second port on the TB3 HD, I would use the 'apple TB3 to TB2 adapter' to connect to the TB2 Hard drive via a TB2 cable

Would this work? I thought best to ask here before buying the new TB3 hard drive

Many thanks

Posted on Mar 25, 2025 10:35 AM

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Answer 1

Mar 26, 2025 6:13 AM in response to Sanj279

The Apple ThunderBolt-3 <-> Thunderbolt-2 adapter works ONLY with a genuine ThunderBolt device on each side. if your drive is just a USB drive, it may not be recognized at all.

also, it does not pass POWER across the interface, so drives would need their own power supply.