G-Technology by Hitachi has transitioned its entire G-Speed RAID external storage family to high-grade, enterprise-class hard drives. All G-Speed products will feature Hitachi Ultrastar drives, including G-Technology’s new four-bay G-Speed Q with a quad interface, and the 16-bay Fibre Channel G-Speed FC XL
Enterprise-class SATA hard drives are specifically designed to withstand multi-user, 24x7 storage applications in systems such as network attached storage, RAID storage arrays, and media servers.
For enhanced reliability, enterprise-class drives are rated at 1.2 million hours mean time between failure (MTBF) and receive additional manufacturing testing at extended temperature ranges to ensure a target of less than one non-recoverable bit error per 1,015 bits read. They also utilize enterprise-specific firmware to minimize the performance impact of rotational vibration interference (RVI) found in rack-mounted servers and multi-drive storage arrays. In addition, enterprise-class drives are designed for a low dollar per GB ratio.
The G-Speed Q is a high-performance, four-bay, hot-swappable RAID storage solution that comes equipped with 3Gbit eSATA, FireWire 800, FireWire 400 (via cable) and USB 2.0. The internal RAID controller supports RAID 0 and 5. Its small footprint makes it well suited for laptop applications. It stores up to 8TB.
The G-Speed eS is a high-speed, low-cost RAID solution with 3Gbit eSATA connectivity. It ships with a RAID controller that supports levels 0, 1, 5, 10 and JBOD. The eS supports multi-stream SD, ProRes 422 and uncompressed HD workflows. A four-bay hot-swappable unit can be configured with 8TB to 32TB.
The eS Pro offers Mini Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) connectivity and provides Fibre Channel-like performance at a fraction of the cost. Bundled with a high-speed, eight-lane PCIe RAID controller that supports RAID levels 0, 1, 3, 5 and 6, the unit can be used in uncompressed HD and 2K workflows. The four-bay hot-swappable unit starts at 8TB and can scale to 16TB.
G-Technology's G-Speed eS Pro XL is a rack-mount storage solution for high-end HD and 2K film production. It ships with a two-port mini-SAS RAID controller card and a locking, two-meter mini-SAS cable. The unit can scale from a 12TB 2U solution up to 192TB.
And the G-Speed FC XL is available as a 12- or 16-bay rack-mount solution with 8Gb/s dual Fibre Channel for fail-safe SAN or adding high performance RAID storage to existing XSan2/metaSAN networks. The solution supports multi-stream, multi-user uncompressed SD, HD and 2K post workflows, and offers RAID levels 0, 1, 3, 5, 6 and JBOD. Capacities up to 32TB per unit.