Updated Design Allows Addition of Second Tape Drive, SAS Disk, or RAID

1 Beyond said its new ThunderTape 2 Thunderbolt-connected LTO-6 tape drive includes a second device bay for a second LTO drive, a high-performance SAS disk, a 1 Beyond GoHDCart disk cartridge, or a 2.5-inch SSD or HDD RAID.

The original ThunderTape, launched last April, included a single LTO dirve. The company said "most customers" wanted more than a single-drive system, leading to the development of the updated version.

Configured with a second LTO drive, the ThunderTape 2 can be used to make two identical tapes in a single pass, to write to one tape while reading from the other, or to migrate files from one LTO tape generation to another. 

The ThunderTape 2 ships with one LTO-6 drive for $3,895, and is expected to be available in two weeks. In its base configuration, it comes with LTFS drivers and a basic copy utility the company designed to overcome some limitations of the OS X Finder.