Western Digital gave a more formal debut to its first Thunderbolt-equipped drive at
Macworld|iWorld on Thursday. The
My Book Thunderbolt Duo uses the fast
10Gbps port to feed two 3.5-inch hard drives at speeds that would be
impractical for
Fire Wire 800. On a 6TB Thunderbolt Duo, peak transfer speeds can hit over
250MBps (2Gbps), making the only bottleneck the drives themselves.
The speeds are potentially vital for video and 3D editors, even on the
MacBook Air. WD estimates that a full HD movie can shuttle to or from
the drive in 30 seconds. At such speeds, it's comparable to a mid-tier
solid-state drive like the own MacBook Air and can create a seamless effect where working from the external drive is as quick as built-in flash storage.
Both 4TB and 6TB capacities will be available, each using a RAID 0
stripe to get the extra speed and continuous space. Although it
technically wouldn't require a Mac, Windows-based PCs using true
Thunderbolt connectors
were only just announced at CES and leave Apple's systems as the only
immediate options. Prices and ship dates haven't been fixed...But We here they will be aggressively priced.
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