High-speed RAID Enclosures for Intel Thunderbolt with true hardware RAID configurations.
With the announcement of the new intel Thunderbolt interface a few manufacturers have announced development of high-speed RAID drive bays. These Thunderbolt RAID enclosures should offer 20x the speed of USB 2.0 arrays, and 1x the speed of FireWire 800 RAID bays. This results in transfers around 800 MBps for sustained connections, matching and besting even SATA RAID. This Thunderbolt RAID arrays feature two Thunderbolt connections, allows for daisy-chaining multiply Thunderbolt peripherals, or using the array as a pass-through for a compatible DisplayPort Display. An important feature of any RAID array is a true hardware RAID system rather than a software RAID set up by the the CPU.
Promise Technology Pegasus RAID Array
These are among the first RAID enclosures to be announced for the Thunderbolt interface. The enclosures come in 4-bay or 6-bay variants with up to 2 GB per disk; the 6-bay model offers up to 12 TB of storage, 8 on the 4 drive bay model. Each of the Pegasus enclosures will support RAID configurations 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50 and 60; making the bay a great solution for any storage purpose. Duplicate backup data, use the drives independently, or merge the entire array all with highspeed Intel Thunderbolt. The company is excited to release one of the first peripherals for the Thunderbolt interface. Daisy-chain up to six Promise Pegasus arrays to achieve 72 TB worth of storage, enough for any high def. video or audio production studio.
G-Technology portable Thunderbolt RAID Arrays
Following suite in development of high-speed Thunderbolt capable RAID arrays, G-Technology (owned by Hitachi) announced the addition of Thunderbolt to a line of portable RAID enclosures. These RAID array boxes will come in 4-bay and 8-bay models, and should support a number of standard RAID configurations. Intended for music or video producers on the go, these devices combine high capacity storage, with ultralight portability. G-Tech intends to deliver premium external storage coupled with the dual channel 10 gigabit per second I/O of the Thunderbolt serial data interface. Being based on the PCI Express protocol, the Thunderbolt port is ideal for connecting to the 7200 RPM write-speed of some of Hitachi's hard drives. External Thunderbolt HDD are ideal for A/V uses, and the added RAID features only increase these abilities.
Sonnet Fusion RAID Array Storage Systems for Thunderbolt
Sonnet has began production of two series of RAID Arrays for Intel Thunderbolt. Like other RAID storage systems the Fusion series supports use for multiple RAID configurations as well as JBOD (managed via an included GUI application). Each of the models contains a high performance internal controller (the 8-bay model delivering substancialy faster The four-drive Fusion E400TBR5 model comes is 4, 6, 8 or 12 TB configurations, all of which taking advantage of the high speed Thunderbolt I/O. Achieve 400 Mbps read speed, and 340 Mbps write for continued transfers under RAID 5 configuration. The high-speed Fusion D800TBR5 supports 800 Mbps read and 730 Mbps write speed; powerful enough for editing uncompressed 10 bit HD video. The 8-bay model is available in 8, 12, 16, or 24 TB variations. Both feature file protection in case of single drive failure and feature an easy to use application for RAID configuration.