At CES, a large number of companies were introducing their Thunderbolt devices. As with previous innovative interface technology that Apple pioneered, the equipment was a bit slow to appear, but 2012 seems to be the year of Thunderbolt.

Elgato is announcing the Elgato Thunderbolt SSD, a portable high-speed storage solution. The Elgato Thunderbolt SSD combines a fast and reliable solid-state drive with Thunderbolt technology. Housed in a nicely designed metal enclosure, the high-speed drive draws its power directly through the Thunderbolt port without needing a separate power supply. The device will be available in February.

This is anecdotal, so your experience might actually be far better, but to be honest: I seriously doubt it. I have a RAID 5 device on my table. It holds all my data. RAID 5 is great: if one disk breaks, you’ll still have all your data on the other disks. Just hot-swap the defect disk and you’re set to go. One of my RAID 5 disks went to Seagate heaven. The good news was it was still under guarantee. I thought this would be a zero budget operation, but was I wrong.

Kingston Digital, the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., announced it is shipping the SSDNow KC100, the company’s first SATA Rev. 3.0 (6Gb/s) business-equipped SSD. KC100 utilizes the latest SandForce controller.

The Linear Tape-Open (LTO) Program Technology Provider Companies HP, IBM and Quantum announced the availability of licenses for the LTO Ultrium Generation 6 format.

Imation launched the Imation RDX A8 Hard Disk Storage Library, a scalable networked storage device that holds up to eight RDX cartridges of interchangeable capacities. The multi-function device helps small- and medium-size businesses (SMBs) conduct high-performance backup, data protection, archiving, restoration and cloud-enabling applications.