HGST announced two new G-Technology products at the BVE Expo in the UK. The Expo focuses on broadcast and production technology, making it an ideal forum to release two new products geared for audio/video and photography production. The G-RAID is a removable RAID enclosure with dual 7200 rpm enterprise-class hard drives. The all-aluminum enclosure features an internal RAID controller and a quiet cooling fan. Users can select RAID 0 for performance, RAID 1 for redundancy, or JBOD to address the drives individually.
The enclosure provides up to 440 MB/s of sequential throughput, which represents the overwhelming majority use-case for video/photography production environments. The enclosure supports multi-stream HD, 2K and compressed 4K workloads.
G-RAID is available with versions sporting dual USB 3.0 and a Thunderbolt 2 connection, or with USB 3.0 only. The MSRP for an enclosure with 16 TB of storage weighs in at $1,295, 12 TB for $999.95 and 8 TB for $599.95. The enclosures come with a limited three-year warranty and will be available in March.
HGST also recently expanded its Evolution Series, a family of rugged storage devices geared for use in the field. The Evolution Series consists of the G-DRIVE ATC with Thunderbolt, the G-DRIVE ev ATC with USB 3.0 and the G-DRIVE ev RaW. These drives feature a watertight compartment and float when dropped in water. The enclosures are shock-resistant and can sustain a two-meter drop.
The rugged external market is becoming increasingly competitive as SSD manufacturers release new 1 TB external SSDs that are fast, small, light and shock resistant. Expect prices to continue to drop as SSDs continue to apply pressure in this market, and the HDD manufacturers attempt to stave off the SSD competition.
