The Thunderbolt ports on our Macs are starting to get a little lonely. It’s been just shy of a year since Apple and Intel launched the standard with the early 2011 MacBook Pro, and there are still only a handful of supported accessories. Of those, there are barely any that are aimed towards consumers; most are for high-end, professional users. And Western Digital’s upcoming My Book Thunderbolt Duo ($TBD) isn’t going to be for everyone, either, but it’s another clean design with extra horsepower under the hood. Originally previewed at this year’s International CES, My Book Thunderbolt Duo doesn’t yet have a final release date, but the hardware’s real and looking pretty good.
The key with Thunderbolt is speed—the standard is capable of up to 10 gigabits per second, to be precise—and this drive is built to leverage it. WD claims a full HD movie will transfer to or from your computer in 30 seconds. 4TB and 6TB versions will be available, and they’ll both use a RAID 0 setup, with two drives inside achieving 250-280MBps speeds. And of course you’ll be able to daisy chain multiple drives or other Thunderbolt accessories, up to six at a time, with promised 760MBps read and 450MBps write speeds across multiple drives.