Mac ThunderBolt Drives

Apple ThunderBolt Storage Peripherals

Several ThunderBolt backup drives that have now reached the market are all multi or dual-drive RAID storage arrays. A decent selection of ThunderBolt external hard drive options are now appearing at Amazon, often at significant discounts over full-retail Apple Store prices.

Apple and Intel ThunderBolt Interface Technology

Starting at around $429, the average Mac user might be able to afford the LaCie Thunderbolt 1TB Little Big Disk Hard Drive. The 1 Terabyte Lacie ThunderBolt Little Big Disk uses dual 500GB 7200 RPM conventional hard drives paired in a RAID 0 config for maximum thruput from spinning platter technology. Dual ThunderBolt ports on the rear allow daisy-chaining additional TBolt devices. A 2TB drive is also available. An Apple ThunderBolt cable is NOT included with the drive. You'll need to order one separately either from the Apple store or the Apple Thunderbolt Cable listed at Amazon.

External ThunderBolt Port Hard Drives

It may seem silly to pair a Mac's 10GBps ThunderBolt to a conventional hard drive. But with careful selection of drive mechanism's they'll provide affordable and speedy TimeMachine backups and data transfers for OSX. The availability of ThunderBolt adapters to peripheral interfaces like USB 3.0 and 2.0, FireWire 400 and 800, eSata will help Apple owners transition and leverage thier existing investment in conventional Mac backup drives until more affordable ThunderBolt backup drive options become available.

Solid-State ThunderBolt SSD Drives

The true capabilities of Intel and Apple ThunderBolt technology is most apparant when this interface is used with Solid-State flash memory storage. With zero moving parts or mechanical latency issues to deal with - Mac ThunderBolt SSD drive solutions will blow the roof off of any previous generation consumer computer storage solution. Now shipping: The LaCie 240GB Thunderbolt SSD. This dual drive Little Big Disk Series SSD was first to market.

A more affordable single solid-state drive TBolt solution, the Elgato Thunderbolt 120 GB Solid State Drive offers the lowest cost per gigabyte in a TBolt SSD drive to date.

Multi-Drive ThunderBolt Interface RAID Arrays

To leverage the port's full bandidth potential with conventional spinning platter drive mechanisms - multi-drive RAID storage arrays are needed. When paired with execptionally fast disk modules at high-RPM and with large on-board cache, tremendous read-write speeds are possible. And there's the added benefit on very high storage capactiy using very affordable 1 or 2 TeraByte drives to build the array.

ThunderBolt Drive Adapters

For those who already own one of Seagates GOFLEX universal interface drives - coverters for ThunderBolt are starting to ship. But beware, there seems to be intermittent problems with the 1st shipping units! Not sure if it's a hardware or OSX software issue at this point!
Seagate GoFlex Thunderbolt Laptop Drive Adapter converts an existing Go-Flex portable laptop drive to ThunderBolt.

For desktop storage in full-size drives in higher capacities, there's also a larger version: the Seagate GoFlex Desk TBolt Adapter for their full-size 3.5" desktop drive line.

Apple ThunderBolt Port Drive Technology

Apple ThunderBolt high-speed computer interface ports are now shipping across Apple computers. Starting with the TBolt enabled MacBook Pro it's now shipping on the MacBook Air, latest generation Mac mini and Dual and Quad-Core iMac desktop Macintosh line.

The only thing slow about ThunderBolt is the arrival of drive storage products to take advantage of it's insane bandwidth. Current manufacturers shipping ThunderBolt external drives include Promise and Sonnet Technologies, Western Digital, Seagate and ElGato. But it's more than just a hard disk drive interface. As a direct extension of a Mac's internal PCI bus - it replaces our notion of PCI expansion cards and the need for PCI slots with a simple, and very tiny port.

ThunderBolt also supercedes and incorporates DisplayPort monitor technology. Existing DisplayPort monitors made by Apple and other 3rd-Party manufacturers still work on TBolt ports. And new generation of ThunderBolt port monitors are on their way to provide both external display and device expansion capabilities with additional TBolt ports acting as a hub incorporated into the LCD monitor.