Now Eight Thunderbolt Storage Systems Available

LaCie announced the Little Big Disk Thunderbolt Series is available for purchase.

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It is a portable solution featuring the 10Gb/s speeds of Thunderbolt technology. This next-generation Little Big Disk is the first product in LaCie’s series of Thunderbolt solutions.

The LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt Series will bring a new level of performance to creative workflows and professional storage users. It offers fast data transfers, complete system backup in minutes, and faster content editing than ever before.

"Performance can come in small packages," says Jason Ziller, Intel Corp.‘s director of Thunderbolt Marketing. "LaCie’s Little Big Disk with Intel’s Thunderbolt technology delivers blazingly fast transfer speeds in a truly portable form factor; we think media creators and entertainment enthusiasts alike are going to love it."

The LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt Series features a pair of 2.5" drives in a Mac OS RAID configuration, delivering read speeds of more than 480MB/s in SSD and up to 190MB/s in HDD.

The more Little Big Disks you chain together, the more impressive the performance. Users can daisy chain several Little Big Disks to maximize the interface’s capabilities and reach transfer rates around 800MB/s – truly rackmount storage speeds in a portable solution.

A game changer for content creators and professional users, the Little Big Disk a portable solution for fast access to data or on-set editing. It supports multiple RAID levels (0,1 and JBOD) and daisy chaining for storage expansion or connecting other peripherals. Additionally, it features a heat sink casing and quiet fan for dual cooling.

"The great thing about the LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt Series is its versatility," said Erwan Girard, Professional Business Unit Manager, LaCie. "No matter which Little Big Disk model you choose, it will serve your most demanding applications with ease and portability. It’s the ultimate in storage technology."

LaCie has collaborated with Intel and Apple to develop a range of professional storage solutions featuring Thunderbolt technology.

The LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt Series HDD models are available through Apple retail stores worldwide and Apple.com. The SSD model will be shipping this October. All models will be available shortly through LaCie’s reseller channel and LaCie.com. The Thunderbolt cable can be purchased separately on Apple.com.

Comments

LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt systems are available on Apple online store. The French company first announced last July an availability for summer 2011 but encounters some problems with Intel to respect the deadline.

The JBOD-RAID-0/1 units, with two Thunderbolt 10Gb ports, are packed with either two HDDs or two 6Gb SATA SSDs (from Intel/Micron). Prices of the systems are $400 for 1TB on 7,200rpm HDDs and $500 for 2TB on 5,400rpm HDDs. Models with 240GB and 500GB on SSDs cost $900 and $1,500 respectively and Apple stated that they will ship in one or two months. LaCie intends to design another version with one SSD only.

No Thunderbolt cable (two meters, $49, from Apple only) is included in the package.

Promise Technology was the first company whose storage devices with Thunderbolt were available, and also from Apple, with higher-end RAID units: the Pegasus R4 (4x1TB) at $999, the Pegasus R6 (6x1TB) at $1,499, the Pegasus 8TB (4x2TB) at $1,499, and the Pegasus 12TB (6x2TB) at $1,999. Apple also offers the Promise SANLink ($799), a Thunderbolt-to-4Gb FC adapter.

Others known companies already involved in Thunderbolt for storage are - with others to come, maybe HP and Sony -:

G-Technology by Hitachi: two-drive 8TB RAID-0 Thunderbolt external solution

Atto: RAID for A/V prosumer/professionals

Sonnet: Sonnet Demos Echo Express PCIe 2.0 Thunderbolt Expansion Chassis (see today's news)

Certon Systems: DAS myRAID with USB 3.0, FW800, e-SATA or Thunderbolt from 2.5TB to 5TB

Magma: Expansion chassis with three PCIe slots for Thunderbolt (see today's news)