The Elgato Thunderbolt Drive+ is blazing fast
The Elgato Thunderbolt Drive+ is blazing fast
2:44

The Elgato Thunderbolt Drive+ is blazing fast

Storage
Hi, guys. Dong Ngo's here, and this is the new Thunderbolt Portable Drive from Elgato, the-- well, Thunderbolt Drive+. Let me go straight to the point here, this is the fastest portable drive on the market, period. In my testing with Thunderbolt, it offered those sustained will and will copying speed some 280 megabyte per second for writing and almost a 310 megabyte per second for reading. By far, the fastest I've ever seen among drive of the same type. Let me show you. I have here a folder of some 56 gigabyte of data, and it takes just a few minutes to transfer it over to the drive. Note that you have this kind of performance only if you have a newer Mac, such as the new Mac Pro or this MacBook Pro with Retina display right here. With all the Thunderbolt Macs, you would see slightly slower performance, though still very fast. Now, this is the second portable drive from Elgato I've ever known, and the only difference in terms of design is the newly added support for USB 3.0. The drive also work with USB 2.0, but you should only use it with computer that support USB 3.0. And that's because in my testing, it was also the fastest USB 3.0 storage device I ever seen. It offers some 240 megabyte per second for writing and some 290 megabyte per second for reading. Almost triple, the speed of other USB 3.0 portable drive. Overall, the new Elgato Drive here offers performance you usually see in high-end, great storage systems, not from a simple portable drive. Just to put things in perspective, I was shocked by how fast it was and I had almost never been shocked before. Now, that is shocking. The new Elgato is both power meaning you just need one cable for both data and power connections. It comes included with one Thunderbolt cable and one USB 3.0 cable. Obviously, you only use one of these cables at a time. Out of the box is preformatted for Macs, but again, easily, reformat it for Windows or into exFAT for both platforms. It doesn't include any software at all. Now, the price, it's not cheap costing some $480 for 256 gigabytes or some $900 for 512 gigabytes. But in this case, you truly get what you pay for, really. For more of the drive, check out my full review at CNET.com, but basically, if you're looking for something portable, and super fast, and you have the computer that supports either a Thunderbolt or USB 3.0, this is the prime example of money well spent, even almost as well spent as the time you use to watch this video. That's because I'm Dong Ngo and this has been the First Look at the Thunderbolt Drive+ from Elgato.

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