Elgato joined in the ranks of those shipping Thunderbolt-ready gear on Tuesday by starting shipments of the Thunderbolt SSD. Its external drive is solid-state only and takes advantage of the extra bandwidth to hit 270MB per second in peak read speeds on its single-drive array. Going to flash storage also makes it near-perfectly silent and makes it skip-proof, further helped by the all-metal body.
The drive doesn’t have a second Thunderbolt port and can’t daisy-chain as a result, but the Thunderbolt port’s power connection lets it run solely from the computer and thus serve as a truly portable drive. Although intended primarily for Macs, it should work with the newer generation of Thunderbolt-equipped Windows PCs once they reach shops.
Drives come in both 120GB and 240GB capacities at prices of $430 and $700 respectively. European stores have the Thunderbolt SSD immediately, while Elgato expects American stores to have them within a week.
