Akitio Builds World's First Bus-powered Thunderbolt SSD

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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.

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Niels Broekhuijsen
Niels Broekhuijsen

Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.

12 Comments Comment from the forums
  • therogerwilco
    too expensive
    Reply
  • nebun
    a little expensive if you ask me :(
    Reply
  • ordos96
    LaCie already has a drive with a thunderbolt port that doesn't need an external power supply. Not sure what exactly they think they have the first of....
    Reply
  • Brian Schonewille
    Yes, please charge me an absurd amounts of money for a port that no one uses barely. I wonder if you could just buy a cheap thunderbolt enclosure and slap your own ssd it... wait nothing to do with thunderbolt is cheap.
    Reply
  • stevejnb
    While I think Thunderbolt is more or less a waste of time the price doesn't seem as outrageous as some people would suggest. Can anyone show me some 512gb USB SSD drives that don't require an external power supply for under $600? I suspect they are out there, but I'm betting you don't get them for under $400, possibly much under $500. If you can find me such a drive, thanks - I need to go get my credit card...
    Reply
  • WyomingKnott
    I'm going to disagree with all of the above. A common high-speed bus for most peripherals is an important thing to have. First products are bound to be expensive.

    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.
    Reply
  • lp231
    Thunderbolt is a fad technology. It's not widely adopted because it's too expensive and USB 3 can take care of thing just at good as Thunderbolt.
    Thunderbolt is like Firewire 800 of today.
    Reply
  • rohitbaran
    Thunderbolt is something I don't like to prosper, since it is a proprietary technology from Intel. Unless they open it, it will be always expensive and any products using it will be expensive too. USB should remain dominant or we will have to pay big dollar for thunderbolt devices like we overpay for Intel's CPUs due to AMD not having naything good in medium to high end CPU market.
    Reply
  • milktea
    11830273 said:
    ... Can anyone show me some 512gb USB SSD drives that don't require an external power supply for under $600? I suspect they are out there, but I'm betting you don't get them for under $400, possibly much under $500. If you can find me such a drive, thanks - I need to go get my credit card...
    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.
    :)
    Reply
  • stevejnb
    Looks interesting, and I notice they have 750gb drives already. 1tb is the point where I'll seriously start considering buying a SSD (the above comment was a bit of a joke) and I may just hold out for 2tb. I was figuring within the next two years, but, may not even take that long...

    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.

    Reply