LaCie has just released the 2big, a new series of external Thunderbolt storage devices with a 4 TB model for $649 and a 6 TB model for $799. Each 2big comes with two hard drive disks which are hot-swappable and can be set up with either RAID 1 (which uses one hard drive to mirror the other for safety) or RAID 0 (for maximum speed and storage).

The miniStack Max fits right on top of the Mac Mini and combines a CD/DVD drive, a hard drive up to 4 TB, an SD card reader, and additional ports (USB 3/2, FireWire 800/400, eSata) including a USB port that can be used to recharge an iPad or other iDevice. If you just want additional hard drives and ports, you can get the miniStack instead.

Our friends at E-Gear have announced another giveaway, this time teaming up with Verbatim to offer a prize pack valued at more than $350. The pack includes the Store ‘n’ Go Car Audio USB Drive, TUFF-’N'-TINY USB Drive, Store ‘n’ Go USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive, Wireless Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard, and the Mini Wireless Slim Keyboard & Mouse. The winner will be announced on December 23rd.

We’ve seen a few leaks this week on Apple’s annual one-day-only Black Friday sales event. The savings on Apple products were accurately slight, but as in years past, Apple is offering significant savings on compatible third-party products. Save over $100 on Bowers & Wilkins speaker docks and various laptop bags, and you can get fun accessories like the Parrot AR.Drone for under $250.00.

A few weeks ago Appletell previewed some of the upcoming Thunderbolt accessories, including an external hard drive from LaCie called Little Big Disk. At the time, this was still in development, but thankfully the wait is over and it’s now available at the Apple Store in both HDD and SSD models. Just remember to buy Apple’s Thunderbolt cable, which comes separately and costs $49.

It’s International Talk Like a Pirate Day, when we apparently get to say things like, “I’m dying of psittacosis!” But it’s not totally useless. It leads to sales on great games like Destination: Treasure Island and Tales of Monkey Island, but you’ll have to hurry to take advantage of them.

One of the selling points for the recently updated Apple Cinema Display is that it also acts as a hub for additional devices with USB 2, Firewire, and Gigabit Ethernet ports. What if you want those ports but don’t need the monitor to go along with it? Belkin hopes to satisfy your need with its new Thunderbolt Express Dock it showed off recently at the Intel Development Forum.

It’s taken a little while, but there are three new Thunderbolt devices appearing on the market. Sonnet Technologies will have an Echo ExpressCard/34 Thunderbolt Adapter which lets you connect older devices to your newer Mac. Blackmagic Technologies has their UltraStudio 3D which provides portable video capture and playback for professional editors. And LaCie will have a Little Big Disk, an external storage device with either hard drives or solid-state drives in a built-in RAID 0 configuration.

You wouldn’t think that mind mapping and Twitter would necessarily go hand in hand, but don’t tell that CS Odessa. The ConceptDraw MindTweet Solution for ConceptDraw MINDMAP is now available. Also available today are NetSpot 1.0 Beta, ExactCODE GmbH, TaskInsight 3.0 and OS X Lion compatibility LaCie’s professional NAS solutions.

An issue with OS X Lion in its current state is incompatible with some third-party network attached storage (NAS) devices. Although a Lion update will likely fix most (if not all) of these issues, Western Digital has decided to address the problem with their My Book Live series themselves with a firmware update.