Promise is racing to create the fastest—and most expensive—external solid state drives around. The Pegasus J2 SSD Thunderbolt Storage Solution combines two costly technologies—SSD storage and Thunderbolt connectivity—into a palm-sized package. Retailing in Apple Stores at $799 for 256GB or an astoundingly high $1,499 for 512GB, the drive does have some impressive features that aren’t immediately obvious.
Rather than using one SSD, each has two SSDs that can be set up in a RAID 0 or RAID 1 configuration. Respective read and write speeds of 750MB/s and 550MB/s are quoted, and if accurate, they’re quite impressive. Those speeds slow if the drive is being powered over the Thunderbolt port, so the company includes an A/C power adapter. Amazingly enough, no Thunderbolt cable is included with either drive.