Seagate's Thunderbolt drive sled has sadly been discontinued. For multi-drive RAID arrays using 2 or more drives, the selection of Thunderbolt enclosures is better, but costlier. Unfortunately, at least for single drives, there aren't many choices of standlalone Thunderbolt drive enclosures available. Akitio has delivered a nice range of standalone Thunderbolt and Thunderbolt 2 and 3 drive enclosures for homebuilt storage solutions using the SSD or HDD drives of your choice.ĭIY Thunderbolt SSD StorageAlot of folks want to cobble their own Thunderbolt data backup drive together with the HDD or SSD drive of their choosing.
Introducing a single-port Thunderbolt portable SSD drive like the Neutrino shown here (using an Intel OEM SSD) is the first step in recouping their investment, a 256Gb is available as well (using a SanDisk OEM SSD). They've long been a maker of USB, eSata, and FireWire drive enclosures for assembling DIY backup drives. One of the notably rising entrants into the external SSD drive market is Akitio who was recently acquired by OWC. To get dual, pass-through ports, you generally have to move up to the multi-drive RAID array type of Thunderbolt data storage products. These laptop-size affordable consumer drives have a single Thunderbolt port for use directly connected to your computer - or at the END of the device chain. Who Manufactures Thunderbolt Backup Peripherals?Major brands include Akitio, G-Technology, SiliconPower, Monster Digital, OWC and LaCie external Thunderbolt SSD backup drive offerings shown above.
In fact, Thunderbolt 3 incorporates SuperSpeed+ USB 3.1 10Gbps protocols so that either Thunderbolt or USB-C peripherals can be used on a modern Windows or Mac computer's Thunderbolt 3 port. The new 40Gbps Thunderbolt 3 spec has adopted the smaller and more widely used Type-C USB 3.1 connector. In the 2020's we now have 3 generations of Thunderbolt: The original 10Gbps TBolt and 2nd generation 20Gbps Thunderbolt 2 using the mini DisplayPort interface. Shopping For TunderBolt External SSD Drives
A PC or Mac compatible Thunderbolt SSD external backup drive can really leverage the potential bandwidth available for the fastest data backups and file transfers you'll ever experience.įYI: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases
So, solid-state flash memory disk drives are the most logical pairing of the two technologies. Conventional hard drives can't fill a fraction of Thunderbolt's data pipeline. Minimally TWENTY times faster than the popular USB 2.0 spec, and double that of the competing 5Gbps USB 3.0 SuperSpeed standard, Thunderbolt outstrips the bandwidth requirements of nearly any single personal computer peripheral available today. HDDs are also good for storing lots of data as they often have a high capacity. An SSD is faster, lighter and less power-hungry, whereas an HDD drive will be cheaper and slower than an SSD. There are two types of external hard drive: hard disk drives (HDD, also known as mechanical or traditional hard drives) or solid state drives (SSD). Starting off Samsung Portable SSD T5 which is an outstanding storage.Ģ0Gbps Thunderbolt 2 drives, and 3rd-generation 40Gbps Thunderbolt 3 storage Add additional storage to a computer with USB-A or USB-C ports. Specifications: The Type-C Gen 2 Dual M.2 B-key SATA RAID enclosure provides a convenient way to connect two M.2 SATA SSD drives to your computer. Support RAID 0, RAID 1, JBOD and Individual Mode.
Samsung Portable X5 SSD is the best Thunderbolt 3 solid-state drive for.