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LaCie turns Thunderbolt budget-friendly with eSATA hub

LaCie announces at CES the first Thunderbolt Hub that support eSATA drives.

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Dong Ngo SF Labs Manager, Editor / Reviews
CNET editor Dong Ngo has been involved with technology since 2000, starting with testing gadgets and writing code for CNET Labs' benchmarks. He now manages CNET San Francisco Labs, reviews 3D printers, networking/storage devices, and also writes about other topics from online security to new gadgets and how technology impacts the life of people around the world.
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Dong Ngo
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The eSATA Hub Thunderbolt Series allows you to use eSATA external hard drives with a Thunderbolt-enabled Mac.
The eSATA Hub Thunderbolt Series allows for connecting eSATA external hard drives with a Thunderbolt-enabled Mac. LaCie

LAS VEGAS--If you have a Thunderbolt-enabled computer but just can't afford Thunderbolt storage, LaCie has something that will ease the pain.

The company showed off at the start of CES the first Thunderbolt hub that also supports an eSATA connection, called the eSATA Hub Thunderbolt Series.

The eSATA Hub Thunderbolt Series is about the size of a portable drive and comes with two eSATA ports and two Thunderbolt ports.
The eSATA Hub Thunderbolt Series is about the size of a portable drive and comes with two eSATA ports and two Thunderbolt ports. LaCie

This is a device about the size of a portable external drive that comes with two Thunderbolt ports and two eSATA ports. Users can connect up to two eSATA drives to the hub and it will instantly make them work with a host computer via one Thunderbolt port. With the other port, you can daisy chain other Thunderbolt devices, including other hubs in case you have many eSATA drives.

This is actually a great solution, as eSATA has the top speed of 6Gbps, which is the same as that of an internal hard drive and the best you can get out of external storage for now. These external hard drives are also much more affordable than Thunderbolt storage devices of the same capacity. The most important is that those who have been using eSTA drives with an old Mac can now upgrade to a new Thunderbolt-enabled Mac without having to buy new external drives. Most if not all Thunderbolt-enable Macs don't support eSATA .

Unfortunately, the hub doesn't work the other way around: it won't allow you to hook up a Thunderbolt storage device to a computer via eSATA. For now it doesn't support USB 3.0 external hard drives, either.

LaCie's eSATA Hub Thunderbolt Series will be available during the first quarter of 2012 with pricing to be announced then.