LaCie and Promise Thunderbolt their desktop storage

LaCie and Promise have announced desktop storage products using Intel's Thunderbolt 10Gbit/s interface.

LaCie has a Thunderbolt version of its Little Big Disk, saying it is designed to store large audio and video files "with ultra-fast data transfer, complete system backup in minutes, and faster content editing than ever before." We're told that the product can "can deliver multiple streams of HD video and offload hours of content in minutes without compromising bandwidth and performance". Users with notebook systems can get workstation + rack-mounted storage array performance.

Promise has announced a RAID'ed Pegasus storage product with Thunderbolt which can deliver, it says, 800MB/sec of throughput. It comes in both 4-bay and six-bay versions with a brushed ally enclosure holding up to 12TB of data. Six of them can be connected together to give you 72TB of capacity in total. The RAID levels available are 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50 and 60.

Promise reminds us that Thunderbolt is 12 times faster than FireWire 800 and 20 times faster than USB 2.0.

Ummm, imagine a Data Robotics Drobo with Thunderbolt. Doesn't that make your mouth water?

The current LaCie Little Big Disk Quadra has a 1TB capacity. We imagine the Thunderbolt version will be 2TB, possibly 3TB. La Cie's Thunderbolt Little Big Disk will be available by the summer. Promise promises Pegasus will ride out of Apple stores and Promise resellers in the second quarter with pricing announced between now and then. ®