Since Apple and Intel introduced the Thunderbolt high-speed connectivity standard back in February, users have been waiting for third-party manufacturers to deliver compatible peripherals taking advantage of the significant speed boost over existing mainstream interfaces.
At the Thunderbolt debut, prominent external hard drive solution provider LaCie was one of the first to commit to the new connectivity standard, noting that it was planning to release Thunderbolt-enabled versions of its Little Big Disk external hard drives.
SlashGear today posted a hands-on video with the Thunderbolt-enabled Little Big Disk, showing off an SSD-based version packing two 160 GB drives. LaCie's setup saw two such drives daisy-chained in a RAID 0 configuration with a 24-inch display tacked on at the end of the chain, all connected to a Core i7-based MacBook Pro. The drive setup was able to handle impressive read speeds of over 825 MB/sec and write speeds of over 350 MB/sec.
The first demo was a raw speed test, reading and writing to the drives with 4GB files. As you can see in the video, the MBP was able to write at up to 352.5 MB/s, while read speeds reached 827.2 MB/s. The company told us that the same setup had hit 870 MB/s peaks in their own testing.
The second test was playing back three simultaneous video files stored on the drives, each coming in at 1080p Full HD resolution. Again, as in the video, playback was stutter-free whether windowed or full-screen. We were also able to scrub back and forth through the clip - with the two others running in the background - with no lag or pauses.
SSD models of the Little Big Disk with Thunderbolt are due to ship this summer ("a question of weeks from now", according to the LaCie representative), but pricing has not yet been released. More budget-friendly models based on traditional hard drives are also in the works, although LaCie has yet to offer a release timeline for those models.
Top Rated Comments
I think a lot of members have been complaining that they've had their Thunderbolt equipped Macs since February and have not been able to purchase any peripherals to take advantage of it.
Don't worry, they'll soon be complaining how expensive the first products are when they finally do go on sale. ;)
SSD is the best upgrade you can do to any computer - better than any new hardware/processor. If you have the choice between the next generation processor and a SSD upgrade, go with SSD (exceptions apply, some [few] people need the 'processing' power of newer processors). The harddrive is the biggest single bottleneck in modern machines - SSD is the cure for it. (And for external harddrives it is Thunderbolt + SSD drive)
The current iMacs have only a 256 GB SSD option and you can't even custom order one with bigger SSD drives or two SSD drives. I need > 512 GB SSD. This way I can order the 27' iMac with the small (256) SSD and attached more fast SSD storage through Thunderbold.
Also, Thunderbolt to USB 3.0, make the freaking adapter already!
EDIT: Anyone notice in the images on SlashGear that the copy of Avatar has a file name that is WAY too similar to what you'd find on torrent sites?? O_O
This.
And a Thunderbolt external GPU.