Got a Mac with the new Thunderbolt port? Then Elgato’s Thunderbolt Solid State Drive is the perfect accessory to plug into it. This portable port-powered solid state drive goes at speeds of 270 MB/s. That transfer rate is blazingly fast compared to the slow 35 MB/s that USB 2.0 gives or the 80 MB/s that FireWire 800 provides. There are no moving parts, so it runs totally silent. It comes in either a 120 GB or 240 GB version. Priced at $429.95 and $699.95, respectively, from Elgato.
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Can’t you do the same thing with an eSATA part?
Only a MAC user would think that a portable drive that can has a capacity of 120gb for $429 is a good deal. USB 3.0 may not be as fast as thunderbolt but it is exponentially cheaper. You can get a terabyte of storage for $89.00-$150 and it’s plenty fast enough at 5gbps/sec. The Elagato is like having a ferrari and having to drive in a speed bump laden school zone, and the standard usb 3.0 drive is like having Ford Explorer in the same area. Which one would you rather drive over a speed bump.
@David – The high price isn’t just for the thunderbolt port. It covers the solid state drive!
Agreed but for external storage, why do you need solid state, when you can get superspeed results without it, and the corresponding solid state drive for 128gb is 338 for usb 3.0, and 623 for 256gb from IOMEGA, and I’ve seen them cheaper on off brands. Thunderbolt is great, it’s the fastest storage out there but you would only need it to transfer insanely large files which no one uses. There’s a great article here about the differences, http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20088164-1/thunderbolt-vs-usb-3.0-why-its-a-lose-lose/ but I still siay you get your best value for USB 3.0 and since each technology is for different computers (PC vs Mac) it’s really a moot point.
Hey you should watch this review it’s just a Sandusky ssd in ac case with a thunderbolt port http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T8_Q9WASK8&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Well, Michael Holtom, not Sandusky, but SanDisk. But the suggestion to watch this little review. It exposes this product for the lousy buy it is and shows Elgato up for trying to gouge its customers by selling an inferior product at a ridiculously high price.
I’d be wary of buying anything from that company.
SanDisk, however, has always seemed an upstanding company that produces many kinds of memory devices and offers good guarantees. That Elgato tries to sell a Thunderbolt SSD with a built-in bottleneck in the interface and an older, slower SanDisk memory module inside reflects badly on Elgato, but should not be allowed to poison people’s opinions of SanDisk.