Orico Unveils Plans for Thunderbolt-Enabled Enclosures

Although launched with much pomp and fervor, with patronage by no less than Apple, the propagation of Intel’s Thunderbolt interconnect is rather limited. Notwithstanding the fact that very few portable devices need 10 Gbps of bandwidth, the ecosystem of the more compatible USB 3.0 interface is growing. Yet some like China’s Orico see a potential in the interface, and being one of the first with devices that use it. The company readying a spanking new lineup of desktop 3.5-inch SATA hard drive enclosures that support Thunderbolt, and more.



For now, shown to those of us interested only as CGI renders, Orico's Thunderbolt disk boxes will be available in four variants: single drive, two drives, four drives, and five drives. Among these, the single drive variant only has one Thunderbolt port, so either it can be a lone device connected to your machine, or at the end of your Thunderbolt daisy-chain. The other variants feature two Thunderbolt connectors, so they can be arranged as internodes in your Thunderbolt daisy-chain. This is where the zesty 10 Gbps bandwidth comes to play. Need a bookshelf full of hard drives? No problem - arrange a few of these enclosures in a chain, and end up with zero bottlenecks when accessing any of your hard drives, or even when accessing multiple drives at once.



You can hot-plug each individual drives without disturbing other drives in operation. Each drive bay has its own pop-out cradle that pulls a hot drive out the right way. The enclosures use external power bricks (similar to notebook power bricks), and have a hard power switch on the back. On the front, each disk has its own soft-blue power-activity LED. When a disk is present and powered, its LED stays on. When there's activity, the LED blinks - just like single-LED Ethernet power/act status. The enclosures' bogies are made of sheets of aluminum that give them a classy feel.



Orico did not give out a time-frame on when its new enclosures will be ready for market. In all likelihood, the company will start off with east Asian markets and their growing Mac userbases, and proceed westwards.



Source and images courtesy: Expreview