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We're still waiting for PC notebook makers to start offering Intel's Thunderbolt interface on their notebooks, but at least the good news for Apple users who have a last gen machine is that we're starting to see quite a few Thunderbolt devices that are slowly trickling out into the market. G-Technology has announced a new external Thunderbolt hard drive; whereas Magma is close to launching its ExpressBox 3T which enables PCI Express cards of your choice to be connected to the Thunderbolt interface.

We're still waiting for PC notebook makers to start offering Intel's Thunderbolt interface on their notebooks, but at least the good news for Apple users who have a last gen machine is that we're starting to see quite a few Thunderbolt devices that are slowly trickling out into the market. G-Technology has announced a new external Thunderbolt hard drive; whereas Magma is close to launching its ExpressBox 3T which enables PCI Express cards of your choice to be connected to the Thunderbolt interface.

G-Technology is a division of Hitachi GST and its new Thunderbolt device is simply called the G-RAID. It features a pair of 4TB hard drives in RAID 0 for performance and this is also the first device that features 4TB drives from Hitachi GST. The only specification detail with regards to the hard drives is that they spin at 7,200rpm, but we'd presume the new drives will have 32MB cache, or possibly 64MB. The design on the G-RAID is mimicking Apple's Mac Pro design which is kind of funny, as this is so far the only Mac that doesn't offer Thunderbolt connectivity. No word on pricing, but G-Technology will offer a model with eSATA, USB 2.0 and FireWire 800 in October, with the Thunderbolt version following later this year and all models will be available in 4, 6 and 8TB.

As for Magma's ExpressBox 3T, well, it gives owners of Mac Books and the iMac an option to add PCI Express cards to their system. The chunky box can house up to three PCI Express cards and has a built-in 220W PSU. It's worth keeping in mind that the Thunderbolt bus is roughly equal to that of four PCI Express lanes, so Magma has left enough bandwidth for a screen to be connected alongside the ExpressBox 3T. Suggested usages are for audio cards, video capture devices and PCI Express based SSDs, although these would most likely end up running at reduced speed. Again, no word on pricing or even a launch date in this case.

Source: G-Technology, Magma