back to article Vulture wraps claws around Elgato Thunderbolt Drive+ portable SSD

It took a bit of persuading to be convinced that Elgato’s Thunderbolt Drive+ drive should end up on the test bench for review. The company had released the, er, "non-plussed" version a couple of years ago and it didn’t quite set the world on fire. Elgato Thunderbolt Drive+ Elgato Thunderbolt Drive+ now has the addition of …

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  1. K

    "that’s a serious amount of money"

    The target audience for this is the fanboi, people who don't want the inconvenience of shopping around, or people who think its cool cause they spent so much money!

    Seriously, my advise is shop around, you can get amazing deals on SSD's these days. I recently brought a 750GB Samsung 840 Evo (great drives) for £260 from eBay (New and still boxed).

    1. ThomH

      Re: "that’s a serious amount of money"

      I don't care enough to compare the specs directly but your Samsung is a different proposition because it's an internal drive with no Thunderbolt port.

      However, the two other Thunderbolt SSDs available on Amazon are:

      • a 256GB Lacie for £254 (which, like the reviewed product, also has a USB3 port); and

      • a 256GB MiniPro for £238 (with no additional USB3).

      So the Lacie is more than 40% cheaper but appears to be from a year and a half ago so is likely slower. However the MiniPro is not yet a year old and boasts of being "capable" of read speeds "in excess of 500MB/sec" and therefore would be faster if the marketing puff were reliable. So it does sound like a better deal.

      1. stu 4

        Re: "that’s a serious amount of money"

        I got the Lacie one last week for my imac 27.

        I copied the OS over from the 1gb HD (just the OS/user libraries, not my pictures, movies, etc).

        I'm getting in the high 300s read/write. which is massively better than the HD, and about 50% quicker than the SSD on my macbook pro 15 retina.

        I just put soft links into the the movies, documents, downloads directories on the SSD to my imac HD.

        Though I keep my current FCPX project library on their too (so it's fast, but also so it's portable to my MBP).

        It now screams along - it's like a totally new machine - FCPX was taking minutes to load, and now loads in a few seconds. Highly recommend it.

      2. Mark 65

        Re: "that’s a serious amount of money"

        Problem is that anything with a thunderbolt interface is likely to have a 5Gb/s (theoretical) USB3.0 port in which case any premium for thunderbolt - especially a piss taking one like this - is unjustified and utterly pointless.

        1. Steve Todd

          Re: "that’s a serious amount of money"

          You're ignoring two factors: firstly USB3 needs CPU resources to run. You can end up using a significant amount of processor power to run it. Secondly Thunderbolt lets you run multiple chained devices in parallel. When Thom's Hardware compared USB3 and Thunderbolt they found Thunderbolt to be significantly faster because of this (they were hitting speeds of up to 1GB/sec).

          1. Mark 65

            Re: "that’s a serious amount of money"

            @Steve. I'm sure modern processors on machines on which this is likely to be used can cope adequately especially when it tops out below 0.5GB/s but I'm willing to be educated given the past failings of USB 2.0 with redards sustained transfer rates. Although you can chain thunderbolt this device has to be at the end as it has but 1 port. Also, being portable, how likely is it to be on a chain rather than just a portable add-on? All of which does not add up to a £150 premium.

    2. Bob Gender

      Re: "that’s a serious amount of money"

      "the fanboi"?

      Wha?

      Not sure if trolling or pushing crayons up own nose.

      1. K
        Trollface

        Re: "Not sure if trolling or pushing crayons up own nose."

        Neither - I'm a guy watching you assume the position, get fisted, then say thank you for it!

        1. Steve Todd
          FAIL

          Re: "Not sure if trolling or pushing crayons up own nose."

          You think modern Macs don't have USB3 ports? We get both options an can pick according to our budgets and needs.

  2. Wibble
    Holmes

    Expensive when 960GB is £350

    For such an expensive case, it doesn't even match the colour nor style of my MacBook Pro!

    Personally, I'd be more interested in a naked case so I could stuff in a Crucial 960GB at £350 and could finally use it for online backups of virtual machines (which are big).

    Hopefully there'll be more like this to market soon.

  3. ColonelClaw

    Thunderbolt is a bloody great idea - break out PCI Express onto a cable. So why aren't we seeing any real innovation in it's deployment? For a start Elgato could source the PCIe hard drives Apple uses and stick that in a case, they have a 1250MB/s advertised transfer rate, straight away you'd be getting speeds faster than SATA 3. I'm not in the hardware business, but they are, so why are their products not taking advantage of what Thunderbolt is designed for? Not much imagination, I'd say.

    1. JEDIDIAH
      Linux

      It's just just about playing nice with PCs.

      It's a hybrid device. It's not just a Thunderbolt device.

      The article said that this allows you to connect it to both Macs and PCs but that's somewhat misleading. This allows you to connect it to both NEW Macs and OLD Macs. It's not just a Mac vs PC thing. If you are taking advantage of that whole "Macs are more reliable and last longer" thing, then you probably have Macs with no TB ports.

  4. sad_loser
    FAIL

    That's just silly

    I paid similar money

    £325 for a crucial m 500 1TB SSD

    £13 for a nice innateck USB3 enclosure

    I have then distressed the enclosure so no one would bother nicking it

  5. Spleenmeister

    £750 for 1/2 a terabyte? Bwahahaha. Bye!

    Mac users will lap it up, no doubt

  6. cortland

    Mr Postman

    Please do not feed the cat. He is far too expensive to encourage coming around.

    1. ThomH

      Re: Mr Postman

      El gato no come?

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