Hitachi have stated that they will join LaCie and Promise in releasing a Thunderbolt hard drive. The Hitachi model, expected to be released later in 2011, is a 4 Terabyte drive, enclosed in a 8-Terabyte 2-hard drive RAID complex. In addition to Thunderbolt, the drive comes with Firewire and USB2 ports.
This drive will be targeted to graphic professionals. Pricing has not been announced, although we can expect this to be comparable to the Promise Pegasus drive (i.e. over $1,000). It comes pre-formatted for Mac but can be reformatted for use on Windows machines.
Seagate has also released a 4 Terabyte drive, in their GoFlex Desk Drive line, however, this one does not yet ship with Thunderbolt. It does ship with a USB3 connection, and as per the rest of the GoFlex line from Seagate, this connection can be swapped out for other data transfer protocols – such as Firewire and USB2. Expectations are that Seagate will release a Thunderbolt attachment in the not too distant future. Seagate is currently selling this drive on their website for $250.
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Consumers can now buy their own external Thunderbolt hard drive. The LaCie Thunderbolt-enabled Little Big Disk can now be ordered online through Apple. The 1TB drive sells for $400; the 2TB drive sells for $500. Shipping times are 1-2 weeks.
Interestingly, these hard drives are only available for sale from Apple; you cannot even order one yet through the LaCie site.
Not surprisingly, the drive does not ship with a Thunderbolt cable, and so you will have to pick up the $49 Apple Thunderbolt cable as well.
Tagged: featured, LaCie Little Big Disk
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Apple is close to completing the transition of its Mac computers over to Thunderbolt compatibility.
First, The Mac Mini got a major update. Along with Thunderbolt, the Mac Mini got a faster Intel chip set, new discrete graphics and the new Mac OSX Lion operating system. Of additional note, the Mac Mini dropped its optical drive, signalling the imminent demise of software, movies and music in a physical format. You can pick up a Mini for as little as $599 from Apple, or for $5 less on Amazon. The top of the line Mini starts at $999.
Second, Apple have updated the MacBook Air. This machine now sports Thunderbolt, Mac OSX Lion, a backlit keyboard and processors that make it about twice the speed of its predecessor. You can find the MacBook Air in 11” and 13” sizes, starting at $999 – again, you can get this for $5 cheaper from Amazon].
Finally, Apple added Thunderbolt support to their 27” LED Display. This monitor sells for $999, or you guessed it, $5 off at Amazon.
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The good folks at iFixit recently opened up a Thunderbolt cable to get a look inside. Their investigation provides some explanation for the $49 cost of the Apple Thunderbolt cable.
As it turns out, the cable includes a Gennum GN2033 Thunderbolt Transceiver at each end. This is a pair of small chips that turns the cable into a “smart cable”, capable of achieving “full duplex 10Gbps transmission”, about twenty times faster than USB2. Basically, any cable transferring at speeds greater than 5Gbps needs on-board chips to manage performance.
While the smart features of this cable goes some of the way in explaining its cost, we can expect other companies to introduce their own Thunderbolt cables shortly, taking advantage of the Gennum chips, at a lower price.
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A few months after the technology was first introduced, you can now buy a Thunderbolt hard drive. The Promise Pegasus RAID enclosure contains 4 or 6 high-capacity hard drives, and has been position for the pro users.
You can purchase the Pegasus as either a 4-bay or 6-bay device.
The R4 contains 4 hard drives in the enclosure. It is available in either four terabyte ($1,000) or eight terabyte ($1,500) storage capacities. It transfers data at 500 MB per second –10x faster than USB2.
The R6 contains 6 hard drives in the enclosure. It is available in either six terabyte ($1,500) or twelve terabyte ($2,000) storage capacities. It transfers data at 800 MB per second.
The Promise Pegasus does not ship with a cable, and so you will have to buy your own $50 Thunderbolt cable. It will work automatically with the latest generation of iMac and MacBook Pro computers.
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Finally, you can now purchase a cable for your Thunderbolt enabled computer from Apple. The cable will cost you $50 – so it is not cheap. Right now, this is the only Thunderbolt cable in town, although, we expect to see more affordable cables from other vendors available for purchase any day now.
The cable is white and is two meters long and uses the Mini Display plug.
This cable works with the new Pegasus Thunderbolt RAID external hard drive enclosure from Promise Technologies. You can also use the cable to connect to an Apple display. In fact, with Thunderbolt you could connect from your MacBook Pro or iMac to the Pegasus, and use the second Thunderbolt port of the Pegasus to attach to a display. Thunderbolt allows you to connect multiple devices in a string, with no degradation in transfer speeds.
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For a very short time, the Apple online store had the Promise Pegasus Thunderbolt 4 RAID hard drive available for sale. For reasons that are not known, the product was quickly removed from the online store shortly after having been released.
We did find out that the 8 terabyte version of the hard drive will sell for $1400.
There had been rumblings of Thunderbolt external hard drives being released before July, so maybe we will see the Promise Pegasus reappear shortly.
Tagged: Promise Pegasus DAS
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At the Computex trade show in Taipei, Taiwan, LaCie showed off their new Thunderbolt Little Big Hard Disk. The demo linked 4 hard drives together, showing off the ability of Thunderbolt to transfer data at high speeds with only a single connection to the computer.
They also reiterated that the Thunderbolt drive would ship in the next few months. They did not confirm pricing, but expect this to sell for $299 or so — in line with the price of their Firewire/USB Little Big Disk
.
Tagged: LaCie Little Big Disk
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If you absolutely need to buy a Thunderbolt hard drive today (and you are on a Mac), you are in luck! You can now purchase the Seagate GoFlex 1.5TB Ultra-Portable External Hard Drive for Mac
.
There is only one catch. It doesn’t yet have a Thunderbolt connection. It has a USB2 and a Firewire 800 connection. Those connections can be swapped out, and switching between connectors is very easy. And here’s the catch. Seagate is working on a Thunderbolt connection.
So you could buy this drive today, use it as a USB or FireWire drive for the time being, and then switch it over to a Thunderbolt drive as soon as that connection ships. (Sorry, no definite timeline on that yet).
This is a Mac-only product that comes in 1 terabyte and 1.5 terabyte sizes. The bigger of these drives lists for $219.99. Right now, you can pick it up for about $20 less on Amazon.
Tagged: Seagate GoFlex Ultra-Portable
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The Apple iMac
now supports Thunderbolt. This makes the iMac the second computer, and the first desktop computer, to get a built-in Thunderbolt connection, following in the footsteps of the MacBook Pro
laptop.
Apple is months ahead of any other computer manufacturers in incorporating the Thunderbolt technology. Expect to see Thunderbolt incorporated into all new Mac computers over the next quarter or two.
Apple is far out in the lead in incorporating Thunderbolt. In fact, they are so far out in the lead that no Thunderbolt hard drives or cables are available for sale as of early May 2011. That should change over the summer, as a series of new Thunderbolt hard drives hit the market.
Tagged: iMac
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