ThunderBolt Backup Drive Storage Solutions
Lighting Fast ThunderBolt Disk Drives - Shipping TBolt Drives At Amazon
The in-stock availability of a growing range of ThunderBolt interface storage options has grown rapidly lately. The most affordable drives per Gigabyte: Seagate's GoFlex drives and ThunderBolt adapter docks are shipping in volume. In addition to Promise Technology, and LaCie - Western Digital RAID drives and ElGato's ThunderBolt SSD are also available for a wide range of ThunderBolt drives to choose from.| LaCie ThunderBolt 1TB Platter Drive | **NEW** TBolt + USB3 Drive | LaCie ThunderBolt 2TB Platter Drive |
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1TB ThunderBolt Drive Dual 500GB Drives 
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Cheap COMBO Laptop Drive USB 3.0 + ThunderBolt Interface 
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2TB LaCie ThunderBolt Drive Dual 1 Terabyte Drives 
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Portable ThunderBolt Drive Options
You can piece together your own laptop size TBolt backup drive solution with Seagate's Go-Flex adapter. You can either pair it with a GoFlex portable - or plug in a bare drive of your choice. Note the adapter only has a SINGLE ThunderBolt port and must be at the end of the daisy-chain, or the only device plugged directly into your Mac's TBolt port.| GoFlex Laptop Drive Adapter | *Required* Cable | GoFlex Portable Drive |
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2.5" GoFlex TBolt Adapter For Laptop GoFlex Line Also Works With Bare Drives! 
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ThunderBolt Device Cable NOT Included With Most Drives! 
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Pair With This Seagate Drive Portable GoFlex Drive 
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A full retail list prices - ThunderBolt external hard disk drives are also now listed in the Storage category of the Apple store. Promise Technology's Pegasus R4, R6, and R8 Mult-Drive RAID Systems with ThunderBolt port continue to be shipping. Of Note - the most affordable 4TB R4 ThunderBolt drive price is now down to $999. Don't forget to add the essential ThunderBolt Cable that's not included with these drives for another $49.
Competitive with the Apple Store's now lower prices: Amazon is listing the same Pegasus, Western Digital and LaCie ThunderBolt external drives. Again, you always need to buy the Apple Thunderbolt Cable
cable separately unless you purchase one of Seagate's GoFlex ThunderBolt Dock, Drive and Cable bundles.
It's been long, slow road to the fast-lane of ThunderBolt data backup and was a fairly expensive one. LaCie has started to ship it's LittleBig Disk ThunderBolt spinning platter models starting around $400. Orginally announced and demo'd as a 500GB SSD drive, the first ThunderBolt SSD model to reach the market uses 2-120GB drives for 240GB total at a price tag of $899. Ouch!
ThunderBolt Backup Drives - Now.. And Later
One of the most important computer accessories to own is a backup disk. Ideally, one with multiple interfaces and a fast drive mechanism for quick backups and data transfers. External ThunderBolt hard drives bring unprecedented back-up speeds to large video libraries, music files, drive copying and cloning - as well as super-quick incremental and full backups. External Thunderbolt backup drives using either spinning platter HDD or SSD flash memory drives are finally here. After initially targeting PRO markets first, truly affordable consumer drives with ThunderBolt ports are now available with prices under $200.
Shipping Computers With Built-In ThunderBolt Ports
The first shipping computers with Thunderbolt ports were the flagship models of Apple's MacBook Pro series. These were followed by single and dual ThunderBolt port iMac models 2 months later. Then the Mac mini and MacBook Air got ThunderBolt port updates. The Macintosh Pro remains the only Apple system that's yet to receive a TBolt upgrade.
ThunderBolt Bottleneck Without SSD Drives?
The 10GBps ThunderBolt spec far exceeds the data transfer capabilities of any wired computer peripheral interface spec to date. It supports Dual Multi-Channel Bi-Directional communications driectly off the PCI Express bus. It is a huge leap forward for technology. Traditional spinning platter drives - even the fastest made can barely utilize a fraction of the available bandwidth. ThunderBolt SSD drives - Solid-State flash memory storage drives - will be a much better match for T-Bolt's bandwidth. The latest SATA III 6Gbps SSD drives such as the Intel 510 Series, Crucial M4, OCZ Vertex 4 models are some of the best matches for leveraging ThunderBolt's thruput prowess.
Think about it: You're really going to want a Mac or PC with BOTH an internal SSD and a ThunderBolt backup drive to even begin to leverage the full potiential ThunderBolt promises.
ThunderBolt RAID drive arrays get more interesting, since the multiple disks or SSD's can have striped Reads and Writes across multiple drives at once. So RAID interface Thunderbolt drives such as LaCie's announced LittleBig disk RAID, Sonnet Technologies Fusion series, and Promise Technologies Pegasus DAS drive array deliver peak performance - while still leaving available bandwidth for other high and low-demand ThunderBolt accessories on the bus. But many of these have proven not to be an affordable solution for the average Mac consumer's backup drive needs or wallet. Lower-cost ThunderBolt storage solutions are arriving as ThunderBolt matures and strives to reach a broader market beyond Pro users.
One Interface To Rule Them All
Because the ThunderBolt is connected direct to the PCI bus - It can act like an 'On-Ramp' for other computer peripheral bus technologies. Expect a wide range of ThunderBolt adaptersa and bridge devices to USB 3, USB2, FireWire, eSata and other interfaces. This will provide compatibility with a wide range of high-speed and SuperSpeed peripherals AND computer displays - thanks to DisplayPort functions that are part of the ThunderBolt spec as well.
