Solid-State SSD ThunderBolt Interface Drives

High-Speed ThunderBolt port tecnhology from Intel and Apple promises to deliver unprecended I/O performance for a wide range of computer peripherals, accessories, and storage devices.

** NOW SHIPPING **
ElGato ThunderBolt SSD

120GB & 240GB Sizes

The direct 10Gbps pipeline that Thunder-Bolt taps into via the PCI-Express system bus will offer mindblowing backup and data copy speeds -- provided it's matched with equally fast storage technologies.

A ThunderBolt SSD - Solid-State disk drive is the only logical match for the bandwidth ThunderBolt provides. With no moving parts, high reliability, almost zero latency and access times free from mechanical parts - It's a perfect match for this new peripheral interface.

When ThunderBolt drive enclosures become available - you're going to want some of the fastest SSD drives available to really take advantage of the data transmission speeds ThunderBolt is capable of.

Crucial M4 SSD Drive

SATA III Interface

Cruicial's new 'value' M4 series Solid-State drive averages a Read Rate: 415 MB/s, Write Speeds around 260 MB/s.

Intel's Next-Generation 'value' drive is the 320 series SSD:

SATA II Intel SSD

Intel Controller Chip

A Perfect Match: High-Speed SSD Drives and ThunderBolt Ports

Never before has a personal computer interface offered the insanely fast speeds of 10Gbps ThunderBolt I/O ports. Literally TWENTY times faster than the popular USB 2.0 spec, and double that of the emerging USB 3.0 SuperSpeed standard, ThunderBolt outstrips the bandwidth requirements of nearly any personal computer gadget available today. Even conventional spinning platter hard drives can't fill a fraction of ThunderBolt's data pipeline. So a Solid-State flash memory disk drive - SSD - is the only logical pairing with ThunderBolt to really leverage the bandwidth available.

Shipping TunderBolt SSD Drives

Currently, the LaCie 240GB Thunderbolt SSD and the Elgato Thunderbolt 120 GB SSD Drive are the only currently shipping ThunderBolt Solid-State drive products.

LaCie combines dual 120GB Solid-State drives for striped RAID performance and it delivers mind-blowing transfer speeds - at a price - currently listing at $899 MSRP. ElGato uses a single SSD drive module for more modest but still snappy performance. With either SSD drive, you'll also need a $49 Apple Thunderbolt Cable - sold separately.

DIY ThunderBolt SSD 'Enclosure'

Thos who've managed to get their hands on one of Seagate's GoFlex ThunderBolt Adapters

have been able to cobble thier own affordable ThunderBolt SSD solution by simply plugging a bare 2.5" laptop-size SATA III SSD drive directly into the adapter. It should be noted supplies have been constrained with unknown shipping times. Also the ThunderBolt GoFlex base only has a SINGLE ThunderBolt port, so it's not capable of being Daisy-Chained with other TBolt devices. And of course, the cable is separate.

Announced OCZ ThunderBolt SSD

At CES 2012 - the Consumer Electronics Show in January - OCZ announced a ThunderBolt version of it's external SSD drive line. The 'LightFoot' is a successor to it's 'Enyo' series USB 3.0 drives which have been shipping for well over a year. The Lightfoot boasts transfer rates to up to 750 MB/s. No firm word on pricing or when it will actually ship in 2012. Product images show a _single_ ThunderBolt port built-in, so it likely will not be daisy-chainable.

Best SSD For ThunderBolt?

Several factors determine which SSD is the best match for ThunderBolt drives. A Solid-State drive in general relies on several components that determine a SSD's performance: Whether it's a SATA I/II or III SSD, has a SATA III 6G drive interface, and which controller chip: JMicron, Indilinx, SandForce, etc is the brains of the operation. Other factors in the solid-state drive market involve how fast the onboard NAND Flash Memory is - and the Clock Speed controlling all of it. It's important to note that LARGER capacity SSD's offer BETTER performance than the smaller models: More banks of chips inside the drive allow more simultaneous reads and writes across each bank. As such you'll often see spec sheets quoting different maximum data transfer rates depending on the size of the drive.

In an ideal world - Think towards the future. 6Gbps SATA III is what most conventional spinning platter hard drives are now shipping with - and is backward compatible with SATA I and SATA II anyways. The SSD market is now using the SATA III interface in models like the Micron/Crucial RealSSD C300 Drive (and now, it's M4 drive.) OCZ Technology's next-generation Sandforce-based Vertex 3 SSD offers great performance boasting potential Read/Write speeds in the 550 MBps range. The new Intel 510 Series SSD is it's 3rd Generation SATA 3 drive now using a Marvell chipset.

ThunderBolt RAID SSD - Power Pair

Want to fill as much of ThunderBolt's pipe as possible? Think Striped RAID 0 SSD drive setups for peak performance. By striping Reads and Writes across multiple Solid-State drives, the next level of drive transfer speeds become possible. Some may opt for premium top-performance SSD's, others may wish to leverage more economical drives paired to get the ThunderBolt drive capacity they need and still fit their budget.

DIY ThunderBolt SSD Backup Drives

Once we have some currently shipping ThunderBolt HDD enclosures - Many do-it-yourself geeks will want to build thier own PC and Mac compatible SSD ThunderBolt drives to match thier budget and performance needs.