Akitio Builds World's First Bus-powered Thunderbolt SSD
Akitio has announced its fully thunderbolt-powered external SSD.
Akitio has announced a new external SSD, which can brag about not one, but two features! For starters, it is a Thunderbolt-based storage device, meaning that it can reach some very high transfer speeds. In addition, according to Akitio, it is the first ever fully bus-powered 512 GB Thunderbolt storage device, meaning that it does not need an external power supply. The new SSDs will be known as the Neutrino Thunderbolt Edition drives.
"We are extremely proud to have created the world's first, fully bus-powered Thunderbolt product with a 512GB SSD," stated Richard Wright, director of global distribution, Akitio. "Video editing and post production professionals have been clamoring for a high capacity, bus-powered Thunderbolt storage solution, and we are confident that our 512GB Neutrino Thunderbolt Edition will fulfill those needs."
The units feature read speeds of up to 502 MB/s, with write speeds up to 311 MB/s.
Akitio has already released the Thunderbolt SSDs; they are available through select retailers with an MSRP of $599.

At some point in the future, perhaps instead of ten cables from my computer to my stuff, they can all be on one hub or daisy-chain. It would be nice.
Thunderbolt is like Firewire 800 of today.
Samsung 840 EVO 500GB sells for $340 at Amazon (or about $380 at retail stores). The notebook kit even comes with a USB3.0 adapter, so you don't even need to buy a separate enclosure for it (for external use). And it's pretty well respected in terms of performance as well as power consumption (idle & load). I'd say it's mostly on par with the Intel 520s... a bit better than the 520s.
And to iterate, no external power needed with the USB3.0 adapter. It's all bus powered! You can hide/fit the entire drive(7mm)+adapter in your pocket to carry around.
By the way, the 250GB model runs well even on USB2.0 (bus powered). I haven't confirmed USB2 on the 500GB model yet.
That being said, I personally don't trust a drive designed to be used internally as an external drive. A bit part of my reasoning is backup, so I'd prefer a product designed from the get-go to be outside of a computer. Though, I suppose a good enclosure would solve that problem.
A good 512Gb SSD will run ~$500AUD. Add a nice enclosure for ~$100 and you're there.
I don't know thunderbolt specs, but given that SSDs can draw much less power than a mech hdd, I'm surprised it took so long.
As for the drive and thunderbolt being useless... to each their own. Everyone uses their system differently. I'm currently on a 2009 iMac. According to that logic, everyone needs exactly what I have, no less, no more.