First 3rd Party Thunderbolt Products Now Available In Apple Online Store

Following news from earlier this morning that Apple has now officially released their Thunderbolt cable, it appears that they have also begun selling the first 3rd-party Thunderbolt peripherals as well – Promise’s Thunderbolt-powered RAID solutions.

Also available in Apple’s online store are a handful of Promise’s external RAID systems, all of which are currently shipping within 24 hours.  The following options are available for the new RAID systems:

• Pegasus R4 – Includes 4TB of storage, in the form of four 1TB 7200 RPM drives – this is the cheapest option, and can achieve over 500MB/s transfer rates.  The Pegasus R4 can be doubled to 8TB of space, while operating at the same speed, for $1499.
• A speedier but more expensive option is the Pegasus R6, which includes 6 1TB 7200 RPM drives, can deliver over 800MB/s of disk performance, and is available for $1499 – the same price of the 8TB Pegasus R4.  You can double the capacity of the R6 to 12TB for $1999.

Despite the high price for these products (although, in their defense, they are very high-grade professional products), I am excited to see Thunderbolt products finally coming to market! For a technology that’s been available since late February (with the release of the 2011 MacBook Pros), it’s about time that spiffy little port saw some action!

Will you be getting one of these new RAID devices or something similar? Sound off in the comments!