LaCie (http://www.lacie.com) has announced its latest peripherals featuring Thunderbolt technology at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas: the 2big Thunderbolt Series and the eSATA Hub Thunderbolt Series. Both will be available in the first quarter of 2012; pricing hasn’t been announced.
With speeds up to three times faster than FireWire 800, the LaCie 2big also features RAID security, hot-swappable disks, daisy chain convenience and a solid-aluminum casing. Heavy data users will appreciate capacities up to 8TB with transfer rates up to 311MB/s, according to Erwan Girad, manager of LaCie’s Professional Business Unit. Daisy chaining multiple 2bigs even increases overall performance.
The eSATA Hub Thunderbolt Series gives new life to existing eSATA drives with Thunderbolt innovation and backward compatibility, says Girard. It connects to a late-model Mac via the Thunderbolt port and features two eSATA ports. This lets the user connect two eSATA external hard drives to the Hub and get full eSATA speeds on their new Mac.
The Hub also features a second Thunderbolt port that lets the user connect other Thunderbolt peripherals. This means up to 12 eSATA drives (6x Dock, 2x eSATA links per Hub) can be connected via a single connection to a Mac with full eSATA 3Gb/s speed.