If you’ve got one of the latest desktop or laptop computers you can take advantage of the faster Thunderbolt ports to connect to external hard drives to access and back up your digital content.
Thunderbolt – an I/O (input/output) technology developed by Intel and Apple – can connect two devices at high speed for faster transfer of data.
It is possible to attach a computer to a monitor or to a Thunderbolt external hard disk drive.
Either way, they are connected with an advanced Thunderbolt cable to connect the two products and provide up to 10Gbps of throughput in both directions.
With an external Thunderbolt drive, the biggest advantage is the ability to transfer large files at a speed of hundreds of megabytes per second.
BUFFALO MINISTATION THUNDERBOLT 500GB – $279
Buffalo’s MiniStation drive offers the speed of Thunderbolt and the small portable size that means it can go anywhere with you.
It is also the world’s first dual interface portable Thunderbolt hard disk drive and allows users to connect with USB 3.0 as well.
The Buffalo MiniStation is ideal for users who need to take their data with them and access it or save it at high speed.
The device is slightly larger and thicker than a smartphone and has a sturdy aluminium body.
And there’s no need for an additional power supply. The Buffalo MiniStation is powered by the computer it is connected to – and it can also be formatted for either PC or Mac.
There is also a 1GB model available that is priced at $329.
WD MY BOOK VELOCIRAPTOR DUO 2TB – $1,249
For those demanding the highest performance and reliability when it comes to creating, saving, retrieving and backing up their content then WD My Book VelociRaptor Duo ticks all the boxes.
It is the fastest drive WD has ever produced with two 10,000 RPM drives onboard and two Thunderbolt ports
It is so fast it’s possible to transfer 20 full length high definition movies in less than a minute, 2000 5MB pictures in 30 seconds and 500 5MB songs in about eight seconds.
The device has two 1TB drives inside which can be used as a single storage block or separately for two different computers.
There are two Thunderbolt ports to connect two different computers or to connect another WD Thunderbolt drive in a daisy chain for even more storage.
And having two separate drives allows you to set the drive to RAID (redundant array of independent disks) which means your data can be saved on one of the drives and backed up on the other drive in case something happens to the first drive.
The device is supported by the Mac OS X operating system and can be used with the Time Machine back-up feature.
The WD My Book VelociRaptor Duo is also upgradeable and allows easy access to the drives (you don’t even need a screwdriver) just in case you want to upgrade the drives or replace a full drive with a fresh one.
WD My Book Thunderbolt Duo 8TB – $1,149
While not as fast as its cousin, the My Book VelociRaptor Duo, the My Book Thunderbolt Duo is still no slouch when it comes to saving large files in seconds.
But what this model offers is even more storage capacity of 8TB. It is also available in 4TB ($550) and 6TB ($850) models.
It has the same dual drive architecture and has two Thunderbolt ports to connect a second computer or connect another WD Thunderbolt drive. Users can daisy chain up to six WD drives for a total of 48TB of storage.
Users can also set up the drive as one single storage volume, two volumes or as a RAID to make sure your back-ups have a back up.
Now you can have instant access to your data, super fast transfer and the comfort of knowing your files are safely backed up.
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