Thunderbolt 3 in Action: Akitio Thunder3 Duo Pro DAS Review

A lot of attention has been paid to high-speed I/O interfaces for computing systems over the last five years. Flash-based storage media capable of multi-Gbps throughput have become very affordable. Display resolutions have also seen a rapid rate of increase. The necessity to support multiple such devices in both consumer and professional computing solutions have exposed the limitations of the traditional external I/O interfaces. Intel has been attempting to solve this problem with Thunderbolt Technology since 2011. Unfortunately, the uptake outside the Apple ecosystem for the first two versions has been minimal at best. The introduction of Thunderbolt 3, however, has been a game-changer. Systems and motherboards with Thunderbolt 3 support started coming to the market in late 2015. The first Thunderbolt 3 peripheral to appear in the market was the Akitio Thunder3 Duo Pro, a hardware RAID solution with two drive slots. Why do we think that Thunderbolt 3 is a game changer? How does the Akitio Thunder3 Duo Pro perform? What advantages does it deliver over other standard 2-bay hardware RAID solutions? Read on for our detailed analysis and review.