The S252SMTB3 2-bay Thunderbolt enclosure enables you to connect two 2.5' SATA I/II/III hard drives (HDD) or solid state drives (SSD) to your Mac® or PC using an available Thunderbolt port. Studio RAID Thunderbolt 2 hard drive A production-grade external RAID hard drive designed to enhance your workflow. StudioRAID Thunderbolt 2 packs lighting-fast transfer speeds and ultimate flexibility, thanks to both Thunderbolt 2 and USB 3.0 connectivity.
SSD ThunderBolt 2 Drives
With the arrival of the Macintosh Pro Cylinder and the high-end Retina MacBook Pro, Apple began shipping the first computer systems with ThunderBolt 2 ports. With additional revisions to the Macintosh desktops and MacBook Air and Pro, we saw the adoption of ThunderBolt 2 progress across their entire computer lineup. A fair number of 20Gbps ThunderBolt 2 SSD storage products became available - although the vast majority are hard disk HDD and not SSD based.Supports 2.5 & 3.5' SATA Drives + USB 3.0 Too
External ThunderBolt 2 Solid-State Drives
For those looking for a true, off the shelf 20G ThunderBolt 2 SSD, LaCie briefly shipped it's next generation of dual-drive ThunderBolt 2 SSD RAID. Its easily recognized by it's dark charcoal aluminum enclosure case to visually distinguish it from it's 1st Generation silver aluminum 10G ThunderBolt Little Big Disk SSD predecessor. LaCie's benchmarks of this PCIe based SSD RAID peaked around 1400-1200 MB/sec Read and Write speeds.External Hard Drive Walmart
Dual 512GB PCIe Interface SSD Cards
Click above to see technical specs and availability of the blazingly fast and state of the art solid-state 20G ThunderBolt 2 external RAID drive from LaCie.
Of Note: The ThunderBolt 2 LaCie SSD was first to switch from 2.5' SATA III solid-state drives used in earlier models to a pair of 512GB PCIe SSD modules for even faster performance in the 2nd-generation of it's external ThunderBolt RAID storage solution.
Best Thunderbolt 2 External Hard Drive
Hybrid SSD / HDD ThunderBolt 2 Drive
Optional PCIe SSD Backplane
LaCie's hybrid D2 ThunderBolt 2 external drive is an interesting innovation. The base drive ships with a high-speed 7200RPM hard disk for reasonable USB3.0 and TBolt performance in the 200+Mbps range. However you can OPTIONALLY replace the drive's backplane with a slide-in 128GB solid-state PCIe SSD module and controller board to get Read/Write speeds well over 1000+Mpbs. This sort of Fusion / Hybrid drive comes at a stiff price, and replacing the Combo inferface card for an SSD also removes the USB 3.0 port and makes it a daisy-chainable dual-ThunderBolt 2 drive only. That said, it offers the prospect of both high-speed AND high-capacity storage.
NON-SSD ThunderBolt 2 Hard Drive
The first ThunderBolt 2 hard drive with conventional spinning platter mechanisms came from Promise. The next-generation Promise Technologies Pegasus2 line was announced and shipped the day the cylindrical Mac Pro was released. Although based on HDD mechanisms, when 4-6-8 hard drives are configured in a striped RAID 0 array, they rival SSD technology for mind-blowing Read/Write performance - at a much lower cost per GB.If you remember historically at the dawn of the TBolt era, Promise delivered the first ever ThunderBolt-ANYTHING with it's 4, 6, and 8 hard drive RAID arrays. For nearly a year it was the ONLY SHIPPING ThunderBolt storage product and with starting prices well over $1400 USD it was geared only for pro video and audio editing or enterprise markets.
The second external ThunderBolt SSD drive to reach the market was a compact, solid-state dual-drive RAID SSD array from LaCie priced well under $1000. Initially it used 2-128GB Intel SSD's on a 3GBps SATA II controller. In the years since, LaCie has upped the capacity, brought prices down and revised it to support much faster 6GBps SATA III 2.5' drive modules.
So it seems history had repeated itself. Promise once again was first out of the gate with a ThunderBolt 2 hard disk RAID solution shipping along with the new Mac Pro - and LaCie close on it's heels and poised to deliver a more affordable ThunderBolt 2 SSD RAID solution.