LaCie has finally joined the Thunderbolt club with the release of its Little Big Disk Thunderbolt Series. Announced earlier this year, the Little Big Disk Thunderbolt is available in 1 TB (7200RPM) and 2 TB (5400 RPM) HDD configurations at a price of US$399 and $499 respectively. There's also a 240 GB SSD model on the way but pricing is yet to be confirmed.

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The unit measures a very manageable 1.6 x 5.5 x 3.3 inches (40 x 140 x 85 mm), weighs 1.4 lbs (650 g) and is dual cooled by its aluminum heat sink casing and a magnetic levitation fan, the HDD unit runs two 2.5" drives in a Mac OS RAID configuration and supports daisy chaining of up two six Thunderbolt devices. LaCie quotes read speeds more than 480MB/s in SSD and up to 190MB/s in HDD, and much faster speeds can be achieved when devices are daisy chained.

• Interface: 2 x Thunderbolt 10Gbits
• Protocols : Data: PCI Express
• Video: Dual Mode DisplayPort
• Data Channels: 10Gb/s independent uplink and downlink
• Video Channels: 10Gb/s independent uplink and downlink
• Daisy Chain: Up to six Thunderbolt Technology-compatible devices
• Internal Hard Disk: 7200rpm, 5400rpm, SSD
• Cache: 32MB (2x 16MB) or greater
• SSD Type: Professional-grade 6Gb/s SATA
• Interface Transfer Rate: up to 10Gbits/s
• Data Transfer Rate : HDD: 7200rpm: 180MB/s / 180MB/s, 5400rpm: 190MB/s / 190MB/s, SSD: 480MB/s / 245MB/s
• Size : 1.6 x 5.5 x 3.3 in. / 40 x 140 x 85 mm
• Weight : 1.4 lbs / 650 g
• System Requirements: Computer with Thunderbolt port, Mac OS X 10.6 or greater
• Warranty: 3-Year Limited Warranty

The 1 TB HDD LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt costs US$399 and the 2 TB version costs $499. We'll keep you posted on the SSD pricing when it becomes available ... and don't forget to add $49 for a Thunderbolt cable.