Thunderbolt devices of CES 2012: Lenovo, Acer, Belkin, Seagate and more

External storage company ioSafe likes to put on a show at CES. Last year, it demonstrated its ultratough Rugged Portable hard drives by unleashing journalists with shotguns and assault rifles on them. This year, it decided to test its Thunderbolt-compatible prototype’s shockproofing instead — by bringing in Tesla coil enthusiast Austin Richards, also known as Dr. MegaVolt.

After shocking the drive multiple times with Richards’ million-volt coil, ioSafe plugged it in. A snap-on metal cover is supposed to protect the drive’s inputs, but the Tesla coil has apparently still overloaded it in about a third of the demos; unfortunately, this was one of those times. The controller board had been fried, so we got a view of the dual RAID 1 solid-state drives inside while the CEO performed some recovery. Once a new board had been plugged in, the drive mounted and we found the text file we’d made beforehand unharmed. Of course, ioSafe isn’t suggesting you take your hard drive into a thunderstorm, but for sheer showmanship, the demo’s difficult to beat.

In case you were wondering just how fast these Thunderbolt-enabled drives are, project manager Julie Wiesen provided us with some figures — though emphasized the numbers as being conservative. An individual My Book Thunderbolt Duo reached speeds between 250 and 280MBps at WD’s offices. Where things really pick is when several devices are daisy-chained together. During the press event, the company had four My Book Thunderbolt Duos linked, totaling approximately 24 terabytes of disk space. WD had Blackmagic’s Disk Speed Test monitoring throughput in real time, and we saw average write speeds of 450MBps while read results topped out around 760MBps (though Mrs. Wiesen said that her team saw that figure go as high as 900MBps when testing on a newer Mac than what was used for the demonstration).

The Lightfoot itself is light and has a rather attractive aluminum shell. The whole package is very light and it seems like the drive will stand up to the rigors of being tossed around in your backpack. Unfortunately, there’s no pricing or availability info yet, though we have heard that there will be 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB capacities. We’ll let you know when we hear more.

Before you start dreaming of a MacBook Air that converts into a powerhouse machine, you need to know that this will require driver support from AMD, Nvidia and Apple. We find it unlikely that the latter will ever happen, but should AMD or Nvidia support the device you’ll be able to use it in Windows. Since there currently aren’t any drivers that support the case, MSI tricked Windows in the demo to make the OS think that the GPU was connected over PCI Express. The enclosure will work with any new Windows PCs with Thunderbolt, like the recently-announced Thinkpad Edge S430. The GUS II will come out during the first half of this year, though pricing info is not yet available.

T.C. Sottek contributed to this report.

Many of the current Thunderbolt-enabled hard drives on the market right now are what we’d call overkill for your average person. To make things a bit simpler, Seagate has just announced Thunderbolt adapters for its line of GoFlex external storage options. The adapters work with any of the company’s desktop or portable drives, granting users the freedom of choosing the capacity right for them. The portable drive adapter will see release sometime in the first quarter for $99, while the larger desktop variety is due before the end of the first half of this year, priced at $189. The company will also be selling a Thunderbolt cable for $50.

Intel’s Thunderbolt I/O is starting to show up on PCs and peripherals at CES, and now there’s another external hard drive using the interface. Announced today, the Elgato Thunderbolt SSD runs on power from the Thunderbolt port, and will be available in 120GB and 240GB versions. That’s smaller than the OCZ Lightfoot SSD, but the Elgato drive has both pricing information and a release date — it’ll be out in February for €399.95 (around $508) and €649.95 (around $825) depending on the size. While that’s far from cheap, Elgato promises speeds of 270 MB/s compared to 35 MB/s on standard USB 2.0 drives.

Update: Belkin just sent us new images of a clearly redesigned dock from what we saw previously at IDF.

Thunderbolt has been marooned on Macs for months, but now it’s coming to at least one PC and it looks like the high-speed I/O is coming to more peripherals as well. OCZ showed off a Thunderbolt external SATA SSD, called the Lightfoot, at CES today. According to PC Perspective the drive will come in 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB capacities, and features a bare design: it only has that one Thunderbolt port. There’s no availability or pricing info available, but we’ll let you know when we hear more — we can only hope it isn’t priced too unreasonably.

Lenovo just hasn’t been able to stop announcing laptops here at CES 2012, but amongst them all, the ThinkPad T430u ultrabook and ThinkPad Edge S430 have stuck out. Both laptops won’t be available until the spring when Intel’s Ivy Bridge processors are available, but Lenovo did bring two early prototypes to the show.

The T430u is really liked a slimmed down X1. It’s got a very classic ThinkPad look, with the same comfortable chiclet keyboard that’s on the X1. The early samples Lenovo was showing weren’t working very well — we had to plug in an external mouse to navigate the desktop — but they did seem fairly well-built. The screen resolution (1366 x 768), the wide upper screen bezel, and lack of a keyboard backlight were quite a let down, though Lenovo says they will be adding a Thinklight to the top of the bezel.

LaCie is expanding its Thunderbolt-capable offerings here at CES 2012 with its new 2big Thunderbolt series of drives and eSATA Hub Thunderbolt series. The 2big Thunderbolt series looks just like the existing Firewire- and USB-equipped models, and supports RAID arrays, hot-swappable disks, and daisy-chain configurations of multiple 2bigs. It maxes out at an 8TB capacity, all-the-while featuring transfer rates of up to 311 megabytes per second.

The eSATA Hub Thunderbolt Series enables dual eSATA drives to be connected to Thunderbolt-equipped machines, while offering a secondary pass-through Thunderbolt port for connecting other devices. Pricing for both products will be announced closer to availability before the end of March.

Ahead of its press conference at CES, Acer has just announced the new Aspire S5 ultrabook, which the company says is the world’s thinnest — it’s only 15mm at its thickest point. It’s a black, magnesium-alloy and brushed-metal 13.3-inch laptop, weighing 1.35kg (2.97 pounds) and featuring Acer’s Instant On technology that brings the computer back from sleep in 1.5 seconds. It also uses Acer Always Connect, which lets users manage data on their computers even when the machine is asleep — the S5 can be woken up from a smartphone, and will immediately log into email and social network accounts. There’s a Thunderbolt port inside, capable of 20Gbps speeds, along with USB 3.0 and HDMI ports — all are hidden below the S5’s hinge, and can be accessed by pressing Acer’s new MagicFlip key. The computer is powered by an Intel Core processor (though Acer didn’t reveal which one), has SSD storage, uses Dolby Home Theater audio, and has a PowerSmart battery pack that Acer says will have a life cycle three times longer than normal batteries.

The S5 will start shipping in the second quarter of this year, though pricing was not announced. Its Thunderbolt support means this must be an Ivy Bridge machine, meaning we won’t be seeing it until at least May or June.

However, the S430 seems like much more than a speeds and feeds machine: measuring .8-inches thick, it’s only slightly thicker than the ThinkPad ultrabook, but still manages to have an optical drive. And from what we can tell from the pictures, it looks a lot like the IdeaPad U260 (the precursor to the IdeaPad U300s) with a mocha-colored aluminum lid and a similar book hinge design. Even better, Lenovo’s listing a “antiglare display” option, though we expect its got a 1366 x 768 resolution panel it does have a 1600 x 900-resolution display. The S430 won’t be available until June and will start at $749.

On the thicker, more mainstream end, Lenovo has the new 14-inch E430 and 15-inch E530 laptops, which will also be available with Intel’s third generation Core processors as well as AMD Fusion APUs. The cases have also been refreshed with new colors, including black, red, and blue. The E520 and E430 will be available slightly before the S430 in April, and will start at $549.