LaCie’s 4TB Rugged Thunderbolt/USB 3 portable hard drive delivers SSD-like speed at HDD cost.

LaCie announced its new 4TB Thunderbolt/USB 3 Rugged RAID portable hard drive ($420 list, $399 Amazon) today, and I’ve had some time to take it for a little ‘spin.’ There are two speedy 7200RPM 2TB portable hard drives RAID-ed together inside to give the device very impressive, almost SSD-like speeds but with the cost savings and huge storage of portable hard drives. At the same time, the package isn’t much bigger than a regular portable hard drive and better yet, it can take a serious beating

The first thing you’ll notice is that the Rugged feels very similar to the rest of the venerable LaCie Rugged lineup, though it is slightly thicker and denser than previous single drive models – as you’d expect.

LaCie has incorporated a built-in Thunderbolt cable which wraps around the edges of the unit and ends up being a foot in length whenfully extracted (see image below). The cable is the thinnest I’ve seen in power-carrying Thunderbolt and the power from a MacBook is enough to power the drives.

The unit also has a USB 3 port and cable that somewhat awkwardly connects to machines that don’t have a Thunderbolt port (like Apple’s latest 12-inch MacBook and most PCs).

My 2014 15-inch MacBook Pro’s USB port didn’t supply enough power to spin up the drives; I had to use the included AC adapter which plugs in where the Thunderbolt cable rests. Awkward. See for yourself below:

The 4TB Rugged was easy to set up with LaCie Manager as an executable. Putting the RAID together was quick and easy. LaCie also installs Intego Backup Manager for you if that’s what you are into. I uninstalled immediately because I’m a Time Machine guy.

Partition-wise, the defaults make a PC-compatible 800GB partition and a 3.2TB Mac HFS partition. That use case made some sense so I went with it for the speed tests. I used the industry standard BlackMagic disk speed test which is used to check SSDs and hard drives for video editing on Macs.

I easily saw 250MB/sec speeds when using the built-in Thunderbolt connector. That’s about half of the speed of high end, internal SATA SSDs, but still plenty fast for most regular video editing. If you use USB 3 or RAID 1 redundant mirroring, expect to see speeds in the 130-140MB/sec range.

For the heck of it, I dropped the drive a few times from counter height to see if the RAID configuration was any more vulnerable than a simple hard drive setup. After about five drops from counter height, the drives continued to work fine without a glitch. I wouldn’t recommend doing this on purpose with a RAID drive with important data on it, but it is good to know that you’ve got a good chance of data survival.

Wrap up:

I’ve long loved LaCie’s rugged drives because they are made to be taken on the road along with all of the bumps and bruising that comes along with it. With the 4TB RAID version, LaCie adds incredible size and speed that video/imaging professionals and people with big backups/lots of storage needs will love. The price at $400 is significant but not at all insane when you consider the SSD-class speeds combined with the big 4TB size.

Security researcher rewrites Mac firmware over Thunderbolt, says most Intel Thunderbolt Macs vulnerable.

A security researcher speaking at the Chaos Computer Congress in Hamburg demonstrated a hack that rewrites an Intel Mac’s firmware using a Thunderbolt device with attack code in an option ROM. Known as Thunderstrike, the proof of concept presented by Trammel Hudson infects the Apple Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) in a way he claims cannot be detected, nor removed by reinstalling OS X.

Since the boot ROM is independent of the operating system, reinstallation of OS X will not remove it. Nor does it depend on anything stored on the disk, so replacing the harddrive has no effect. A hardware in-system-programming device is the only way to restore the stock firmware.

Apple has already implemented an intended fix in the latest Mac mini and iMac with Retina display, which Hudson says will soon be available for other Macs, but appears at this stage to provide only partial protection…

Once installed, the firmware cannot be removed since it replaces Apple’s public RSA key, which means that further firmware updates will be denied unless signed by the attacker’s private key. The hacked firmware can also replicate by copying itself to option ROMs in other Thunderbolt devices connected to the compromised Mac during a restart. Those devices remain functional, making it impossible to know that they have been modified.

The good news is that the attack method requires physical access to your Mac, and Hudson is not aware of any Mac firmware bootkits in the wild. He notes that there is no way to be sure, however.

It was previously suggested that the NSA used similar attack methods, physically intercepting shipments to install bootkits before computers reach their buyers. Once out in the wild, the hacked firmware could be easily spread by something as seemingly innocuous as a Thunderbolt monitor in a hotel business center.

The slides from Hudson’s presentation are available on Flickr, and a video is now available. Hudson says that he has been in contact with Apple regarding EFI vulnerabilities, and that his slides provide sufficient ‘pseudo-code’ to allow others to verify the hack without making it too easy for others to exploit.

The presentation follows an earlier one in which the hacker who last year used lifted fingerprints to fool Touch ID suggested that it may be possible to repeat the attack using only a photograph of a finger.

WD ships the first Thunderbolt-powered portable dual-drive.

WD  announced immediate availability of the My Passport Pro, which it bills as the first Thunderbolt-powered portable dual-drive. The two internal 2.5-inch hard drives and an integrated Thunderbolt cable are

packed in a svelte aluminum enclosure that weighs just 1.59 pounds. Users can easily choose between a RAID 0 setup for increased performance or RAID 1 for data redundancy. It’s capable of speeds up to 233 MB/s and to help put that in perspective, it is capable of  ”copy[ing] a 22 GB high-definition video file in half the time typically required by a USB 3.0 drive working in RAID 0 format.” Combined, it is about half the speed of an SSD but with much more space/$.

The My Passport Pro is available in 2TB ($299.99) and 4TB (429.99) capacities from Amazon, WD, and Apple stores.

Source: 9to5Mac.

$90 Kanex SimpleDock is a beautiful USB 3/Gigabit Ethernet Mac dock, without expensive Thunderbolt.

Thunderbolt Docks for Mac  and one thing remains constant: The starting prices range well over $200 (Belkin’s can be had for half price $150) and that’s before you buy an expensive $30 Thunderbolt cable. The question is: Do you really need Thunderbolt to have a quality/usable dock for your MacBook? Can you get almost all of what you need just from USB 3?

Kanex sent me their $90 USB 3 SimpleDock a few months ago and I’ve put it through its paces ever since.  The first thing you’ll notice out of the box is that it is made extremely well, looks very ‘Apple’ and is substantial in weight. It doesn’t move when you plug in devices because of that weight and a rubberized bottom. On top, all you’ll see is a space that coincidentally fits an iPhone perfectly with a charger cable hole through the bottom. Around back, you’ll find 3 USB 3 ports, a Gigabit Ethernet port as well as a 10W high powered ‘Charge-only’ port.

So you are getting 3 products in one here: An iOS device quick charger, a USB3->Gigabit Ethernet adapter and 3 port USB 3 hub. The question is: Is the SimpleDock worth the $90?

Taking the 3 things the $90 SimpleDock does by itself, probably not. You can get a pretty amazing 5 port USB charger for $25. Add a nice 4 port USB 3 hub for $30. Then add Apple’s premium Thunderbolt to Ethernet adapter for $28 and you have some beer money left over.

But we’re talking about the whole package here. Kanex went out of the way to make a premium product that looks and feels pretty amazing next to a MacBook. It also moves the wires around the back and keeps things organized. Can you put a price on keeping your desk organized and uncluttered? Probably. But for me it comes in way over the $90 Kanex is charging.

In my use, the SimpleDock works as advertized. The Gigabit Ethernet adapter requires a driver install and the USB 3 dock cable could have been a little longer in my estimation.  Other than that, what you see is what you get. The 10W port was able to charge both iPhone and iPad air as quick as native chargers and GigEthernet speeds were on par with other adapters.

As far as featureset, I would have appreciated AUX audio input and output port. Slightly more expensive USB docks often contain this feature while others offer Displaylink monitor adapters. My experience with Displaylink has been poor but an audio port would allow me not to have to plug in my speakers or headphones every time I connect.

On the high end, Belkin has been super-aggressive in pricing its competing Thunderbolt Express Dock which has a bigger featureset. For $150 or $60 more than the SimpleDock, you get a Thunderbolt pass-through port, Firewire 800 legacy support and the much appreciated AUX in and out.  You also get the same Gigabit Ethernet and USB 3 hub but no charging port and you must also have a $30 Thunderbolt cable. And it doesn’t look as good on your desk.

The $90 Kanex SimpleDock is a premium product that looks great next to your MacBook and iOS devices and work just as well. I can recommend it if you want an elegant ‘simple’ solution to plugging in your MacBook.

Source: 9to5Mac.

Thunderbolt 2: The sequel with the un-original name, now official.

Maybe this should be titled; Thunderbolt 2: Return of the Thunderbolt. But, in any case, the successor to the original has been formalized by Intel with an un-original name but some pretty awesome specifications. Originally known as the slightly more exciting “Falcon Ridge,” Intel demonstrated the new Thunderbolt for the first time at the NAB show in April.

Importantly, the output has been doubled to 20Gbps, and Thunderbolt 2 is capable of transferring and displaying 4K video simultaneously. Impressive to say the least. The inclusion of Displayport 1.2 also means that video streaming is possible to one 4K monitor, or dual QHD monitors. And, for those of us already invested in a bunch of Thunderbolt accessories, Thunderbolt 2 is backwards compatible, so you aren’t going to have to start all over again.

Production is set to begin this year, ramping up as we go in to 2014. There’s a lot more nerdy information available from Intel at the source link below, so who’s excited for this?

Apple releases stability fix firmware update v1.2 for Thunderbolt.

Users of a Thunderbolt equipped Mac will want to head on over to the Apple Support pages and grab the latest firmware update. It’s not a huge update, in fact the download is just 1.22MB in size, but does promise stability fixes for Thunderbolt and for Target Disk Mode. And we’ll always welcome stability fixes.

A restart of your Mac will be required following install, and to grab the new firmware hit the source link below.

Source: iMore.

Belkin Finally Releases Thunderbolt Express Dock – Available Now for $299.

Well over a year after first announcing the product at CES in 2012, Belkin has finally released their Thunderbolt Express dock, available now for $299. The dock includes Gigabit Ethernet, a FireWire 800 port, an extra Thunderbolt port, audio in and out jacks, and more, totaling 8 usable ports.

From Belkin’s website:

INTRODUCING THUNDERBOLT™ EXPRESS DOCK

The Belkin Thunderbolt™ Express Dock is an easy, powerful way to take advantage of Thunderbolt™ technology. The Thunderbolt™ Express Dock lets you use a single connection to create high-speed, reliable transfers between your laptop and up to eight other devices, including FireWire, Ethernet, USB, and daisy chaining multiple Thunderbolt™ devices.

So taking your laptop when you go, and bringing it home when you return means connecting with only one cable.

I’ve been waiting for this dock to finally hit the market for a long time – and I can’t wait to get my hands on a review unit! Watch for a full, detailed review within the coming weeks! The Belkin Thunderbolt Express Dock is available now direct from Belkin. Similar docks have previous been released from a number of manufacturers – including the Matrox DS1, which is available now, and forthcoming docks from both CalDigit and Sonnet.

For more info, or to purchase, visit Belkin’s product page on the web!

Source:  MacTrast.

Fiber Optic Thunderbolt Cables Begin Mass Production, Available Up to 30m in Length.

Intel has signed off on active fiber optic cables made by Sumitomo Electric Industries, the first of their kind to go into mass production.

The cables can be up to 30 meters (just under 100 feet) long, and provide full 10Gbps throughput with little performance degradation even when pinched by up to 180 degrees or tangled in knots. The cord is the same thickness as current standard Thunderbolt cables, but the connector size is slightly longer.

As ZDNet points out, these currently unpriced cables could be used to put Thunderbolt data storage devices like the Drobo 5D in a soundproofed closet, away from the host Mac.

There have been a number of reports about the development of fiber optic Thunderbolt cables over the past year, with no official timeline laid out for their availability. Pricing is also unknown, but given the more advanced active fiber technology in the cables, it’s possible they could be significantly more expensive than current cables.

One significant difference between the optical cable and the metal is that the new optical Thunderbolt cables do not carry on-board power. Any devices connected with them, like smaller portable hard drives, need external power supplies to work. They cannot be bus-powered.

For those who already own a Thunderbolt-enabled Mac, Intel notes that the existing Thunderbolt ports will be compatible with both copper and fiber optic cables, ensuring cross-compatibility once the new cables arrive.

Source: Mac Rumors.