It's hard to use the words ThunderBolt and cheap in the same sentence, at least in terms of cost per gigabyte. However, Western Digital's pushing the envelope with a laptop size portable ThunderBolt RAID drive available in 2GB or 4GB configurations with it's My PassPort Pro drive series.

Portable ThunderBolt RAID Drive

Dual 2.5" Drive Modules

Utilizing two 2.5" laptop size hard drives in a portable enclosure with integrated ThunderBolt cable, WD is delivering a portable ThunderBolt hard drive with excellent HDD performance up to 233Mbps using spinning platter mechanisms. The drive can be configured as Striped RAID 0, Mirrored RAID 1, or as JBOD for dual independent drives. Although SSD prices have come down precipitously in the past year, 2 and 4TB solid-state drive capacities still aren't affordable for most.

In a Striped RAID 0 configuration, 233Mbps significantly outperforms any single HDD solution and approaches the data transfer speeds a much lower capacity single SSD flash memory drive would provide at these price points. Perhaps Western Digital will release a solid-state flash memory ThunderBolt SSD RAID drive in a future revision.

For a wide range of Mac compatible ThunderBolt Storage solutions visit www.thunderbolt-hard-drive.com for the fastest file transfers and Apple TimeMachine backups ever!

The Fastest Mac SSD Drive Upgrade is Samsung's 840 series SSD with state of the art controller and NAND flash memory. For many MacBooks and Mac mini's made in the last 5 years, and especially for newer Apple computers you ideally want a 7mm or 9mm low-profile form-factor module. A laptop size 2.5" SATA III SSD solid-state flash memory drive is an excellent option to breathe new life in an aging Mac laptop or desktop system. Samsung delivers one of the best SSD's for Mac drive swaps ever, with record-setting data transfer rates at a very reasonable cost per gigabyte.

For Macintosh models such as the iMac or Mac Pro towers which use standard 3.5" SATA drives, a drive converter like the IcyDock can convert a laptop SSD to a full size desktop drive in seconds. Just plop the best Mac compatible 2.5" SSD you can afford {from OCZ, Samsung, Sandisk, Kingston or others) into the case and close the cover. It's that simple. OWC's drive adapter sled is another good option.

Visit www.ssd-for-mac.com to learn more about various options to turbo-charge an older Mac's performance.

Low-Cost USB 3.0 Mac Backup Drive : More affordable than ever, laptop drive prices have become ridiculously cheap and capacities up to 2 Terabytes are now possible in a 2.5" laptop backup drive mechanism. Western-Digital continues to deliver the #1 best-selling Apple backup drive in it's Passport series which also offers a few red, blue, silver and black color options for those who might want a bit more eye-candy in their backup solution. These days many Apple laptop backup products start around $55 - quite affordable for this must-have Mac accessory.

The transition from USB 2.0 to SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interfaces on newly released storage products has been swift and (unlike ThunderBolt) hasn't added one cent to the cost of manufacturing a drive that's USB3 capable - and still backward compatible with legacy USB 2.0 and even 1.x computers. Although the latency of a mechanical storage device is still a peak performance bottleneck, at least USB 3 offers other technical advantages for less CPU intensive and more efficient bi-directional data transfers, more current to power the drive via USB, and more intelligent power management from a MacBook's usable battery life.

Although Western-Digital, Seagate, LaCie and others offer 'Mac-Specific' models of external backup drives for Apple users, usually they're priced at a $10-or-more premium when all you really need to do when you get the drive is simply reformat it from Windows to Mac OSX. That can be done with Apple's Disk Utility in less than 1 minute to make it optimal for Mac file transfers and data backups.

For some other Apple desktop and MacBook external USB 3.0 backup drive options visit mac-backup-drives.com for a sampling of Mac compatible data storage solutions.