Elgato introduced the world's first bus-powered Thunderbolt external hard drive, the Elgato Thunderbolt SSD, at CES 2012. The drive is based on an internal solid-state drive and is available in 128GB and 256GB capacities.
Dong Ngo
Former CNET editor Dong Ngo has been involved with technology since 2000, starting with testing gadgets and writing code for CNET Labs' benchmarks. He managed CNET's San Francisco Labs, reviews 3D printers, networking/storage devices, and also wrote about other topics from online security to new gadgets and how technology impacts the life of people around the world.
The new Elgato Thunderbolt SSD is about the same size as other portable drives that are based on the 2.5-inch internal drives often found in notebooks.
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The Elgato itself is based on an SATA 6Gbps solid-state drive, the fastest internal drive type on the market. This is because the Thunderbolt standard offers even faster than that in terms of bandwidth--up to 10Gbps.
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The Elgato drive comes with just one Thunderbolt port, used for both power and data connections. The Thunderbolt cable itself is not included but sold by Apple for another $50.
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Currently, Apple offers only one size for the Thunderbolt cable, which works better for desktop drives than for a portable drive like the Elgato Thunderbolt SSD. Elgato said that there will soon be a new Thunderbolt cable that's shorter and possibly even thinner which would better suit the portable solution.
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As it requires no external power adapter, the Elgato Thunderbolt SSD makes a perfect companion for mobile users.
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And it'll be an even better companion with a new, shorter Thunderbolt cable.
