Western Digital outs first Thunderbolt drive: $599 for 4TB

What good is Intel's speedy Thunderbolt I/O without devices to take advantage of it? Not much, which is why it's always a good thing when companies announce devices compatible with the technology.

Western Digital has announced the availability its first Thunderbolt-ready external drive, the My Book Thunderbolt Duo.

Offered in 4TB and 6TB varieties, the drives sell for $599 and $699, respectively. Each unit comes equipped with a pair of internal drives, allowing for various RAID configurations (mirroring, spanning, etc.) The drive's external Thunderbolt ports even  allow it to be daisy chained.

The star of the show, of course, is speed, and WD says that the My Book Thunderbolt Duo is fully capable of offering the 10 Gb/s transfer speeds Thunderbolt is known for.

One thing, though: the device doesn't ship with a Thunderbolt cable. Those are are sold separately, and for $49.