Seagate Starts Selling GoFlex Portable Thunderbolt Adapter

Eh...adapters should not cost more than then drives they connect to...fail...

Makes me want USB3 so badly... Low cost implementation, dirt-cheap cables, dirt-cheap drives, plenty of speed...

Personally I believe that thunderbolt will be the standard in the next 2-3 years. It's gonna be the new USB.. Cant wait for thunderbolt 500 Giga memory sticks!!!!

Haha. I remember when they said that about Firewire.

It's a Thunderbolt to 2.5" SATA Cable

I just ordered one of these and the Apple Thunderbolt cable.

I've been using GoFlex drives for a couple years now. What's great about the adapters is that it's just a typical SATA+power connector which allows you to plug in ANY 2.5" SATA drive using any of the adapters (USB2, USB3, Firewire, etc). Because the Thunderbolt adapter is compatible with any GoFlex portable drive, you essentially have a Thunderbolt to 2.5" SATA cable.

For example, here's an image of a GoFlex USB3 adapter connected to a non-GoFlex drive (http://f.josh.sc/goflex_usb3.jpg).

I just wanted to point that out because it's not really known to people not using GoFlex products.

Yes thunderbolt is faster then USB3 and I understand the point to future proofing so Apple can continue to use the same port for many years to come but this is just silly.

First Apple gets rid of FW800 in the cheaper computers it sells. Then it comes out with a port that forces people to use something where devices cost a lot more.

Apple really should have supported USB3. It is almost a no brainer since it is backwards compatible and it costs much less.

The truth about these portable drives is that they can physically only go so fast. Even 3.5" desktop drives are limited to what they can physically pump out. As soon as you put any data on a single drive they start to slow down. By the time a drive gets to 50% full it isn't running as fast as it did when it was empty. Even a 2 drive raid-0 can only go so fast with magnetic drives and will be limited in speed to less then what USB3 can already do. You would need at least a 4 drive raid-0 or a 2 drive raid-0 with good SSD's to get anywhere near thunderbolt speeds.

Thunderbolt is nice and I plan on using it for other devices but for storage it is a couple of years ahead of its time. Some may consider that awesome but it just isn't practical yet unless like somebody said you are one of the poor suckers on a MBA. The MBA could have easily had USB3 however for a much lower cost and easier to find products. I love Apple products but I wish more users would stand up and speak out about these types of decisions.

The one advantage to this adapter is that it can move from drive to drive. This means if companies do start selling portable drives with TB they could cost $100.00 more then non TB versions of the same drive. With this adapter you can get by with only paying for TB once which can be huge if you really have to use TB over FW800.

The desktop version for $199.00 is nuts. The TB stuff costs them the same and the only difference is the form factor of the dock and a power connector. Why this should cost an extra $100.00 makes no sense at all.

Cant wait for thunderbolt 500 Giga memory sticks!!!!

Yeah, because everyone wants to pay 10x more for the interface than the actual storage medium.

Thunerbolt is terrible as a widespread interconnect because of the controller chip cost, limited chaining capability, and system resource costs.