It’s December and as Apple promised, the new Mac Pro is to go on sale soon. This new desktop computer from Apple sports a sleek minimalistic design with lots of Thunderbolt and USB 3 ports on the back.

These ports are a very important element on this new Mac as there’s hardly any expansion options inside the Mac itself. For instance, you can’t put in extra hard drives as there are no hard drive bays inside the new Mac Pro. Instead, Apple chose to go for the blazingly fast PCIe Flash based storage. So as it seems, the only upgradable elements will be RAM and maybe we will be able to swap out the PCIe Flash based storage for a bigger one. But that’s a big maybe. Third party manufacturers would have to produce a custom PCIe card for it to fit in the single unusual small PCIe slot that the Mac Pro has. This also introduces another problem if you rely on PCIe cards like those from UAD or when you have a Pro Tools HDX system. The Mac Pro has no half or full size PCIe slots.

So you won’t be able to put your TeraBytes of storage nor your PCIe cards into the new Mac Pro. For storage you will either have to buy external USB 3 cases or go for the faster, albeit more expensive, Thunderbolt options. The problem is that there weren’t that many available when the Mac Pro was announced, but as the release of the Mac Pro approaches more manufacturers reveal Thunderbolt storage options.

Here’s an extensive overview of the external Thunderbolt options currently available:

– Lacie Little Big Disk – dual 2,5″ drive storage solution
– Lacie Little Big Disk 2 – dual 2,5″ drive Thunderbolt 2 storage solution
– Lacie 2big – storage solution with 2 drives in one case
– Lacie 5big – storage solution with 5 drives in one case
– Lacie Rugged – bus powered portable hard drive
– Black Magic MultiDock – 19 inch rackmount box with 4 swappable SSD bays
– Netstor Turbo Box – storage and PCIe solutions in one box
– Netstor PCIe – PCIe expansion chassis without storage
– Netstor 8 bay Desktop – 8 bay high desktop storage solution
– Netstor 16 Bay – 3U 19 inch 16 bay storage incl. PCIe expansion
– Netstor 24 Bay – 4U high 24 bay storage incl. PCIe expansion
– Elgato Thunderbolt SSD – external case with one 240 GB SSD drive
– Elgato Thunderbolt Drive+ – external case with one 512 GB SSD Drive
– G-Raid Thunderbolt – 2 drives RAID solution
– Seagate GoFlex Thunderbolt – swappable case with adapter for 1 drive
– Promise Pegasus – multiple external RAID Thunderbolt II cases
– Promise Pegasus J4 – 2.5″ HDD/SSD Thunderbolt™ Enabled Storage
– Western Digital MyBook Thunderbolt Duo – external case with 2 drives
– Magma Roben 3 – external Storage and PCIe 19 inch rack case (now also available with TB 2)
– Magma 1T, 3T & 3T with storage – cases for 1 or 3 PCIe cards incl. storage (now with TB2)
– Sonnet Fusion – Desktop 8 drive storage solution
– Echo Express SE II Thunderbolt 2 Expansion Chassis – 2-slot Desktop TB2 PCIe Expansion
– Echo Express III-D Desktop Thunderbolt 2 Expansion Chassis – 3-slot Desktop TB2 PCIe expansion
– Echo Express III-R Rackmount Thunderbolt 2 Expansion Chassis – 3-slot Rackmount TB2 PCIe expansion
– OWC Mercury Helios – single slot PCIe expansion chassis
– OWC Mercury Elite Pro – 2 drive case with Lacie Thunderbolt eSata adapter
– OWC Mercury On-The-Go Pro – external Thunderbolt drive ( copy/paste link in new page )
– Drobo mini – Thunderbolt case with swappable 2.5 inch SSD or hard disks
– Drobo 5D – 5 bay RAID case with swappable 3.5 inch drives
– Buffalo MiniStation – portable bus-powered thunderbolt drive
– Areca Arc-8050 – 8 bay RAID Thunderbolt box
– Rocketstor 5212 – external Thunderbolt box with 2.5″/3.5″ SATA slots

Okay, that’s it for now. As you can see third party developers have jumped the bandwagon and are producing plenty of external PCI and storage solutions for Thunderbolt. As more solutions become available, we will add them to the list. Do you know any solution that we forgot to mention? Let us know!