“Finally Thunderbolt gets some consumer love–some pricey, pricey consumer love,” Roberto Baldwin reports for Mac|Life.
“The Seagate GoFlex series of portable hard drives has been around for a few years. One drive can attach to numerous interface adapters so you can use it with USB and FireWire. So for Seagate it was a no-brainer to add a Thunderbolt adapter, too,” Baldwin reports. “Using a Seagate GoFlex over Thunderbolt certainly is fast. We copied the same 1.13GB folder to a 7200-rpm FreeAgent GoFlex drive using the Thunderbolt adapter on a MacBook Air, and then again using USB 2.0. The USB transfer took 45 seconds while the Thunderbolt adapter finished the same task in 17 seconds. The only thing slowing Thunderbolt down is the drive itself. But that speed comes at a price.”
Baldwin reports, “Thunderbolt is expensive. The cable–which isn’t included–will set you back $49. The GoFlex Thunderbolt adapter is $99. That’s a $150 investment and you haven’t even bought the drive yet.”
Read more in the full review here.