View this article at: http://dev.macnn.com/articles/05/07/28/trans.international.minig
Thursday, Jul 28, 2005 6:15pm

New external FireWire/SATA ...

A new line of external FireWire/SATA hard drive solutions were announced today from Trans International. Dubbed the "miniG" series, FireWire models include the four-drive FireWire 800 enclosure with an 80MB/sec data transfer rate, the two-drive FireWire 800/400 enclosure also with an 80MB/sec transfer rate and the single-drive FireWire 400 enclosure with a 38MB/sec transfer rate. SATA miniG models include the four-drive solution, featuring over 200MB/sec transfer rate and the two-drive solution with a 100MB/sec transfer rate. All miniG drive enclosures feature tempered aircraft aluminum with a perforated design to maximize airflow and an external power supply to reduce heat buildup and interference. All models support RAID 0 ("striped," for higher performance) and RAID 1 ("mirrored," for fault tolerant applications).

"MiniG enclosures permit users to build top-level, highly portable, storage capacities nearing 2TB, use off-the-shelf ATA drives at high sustained speeds, and produce professional quality production results, [...] professionals and end-users can choose miniG-tested drives from the Trans International website or simply fill the enclosures with their own drives." The enclosures are designed to complement the styling of the current-generation Power Mac G5 and are expected to ship August 10th. Single-drive FireWire 400 configurations are available in 300GB ($300), 400GB ($400), and 300GB ($600), while four-drive FireWire 800/400 RAID solutions are available for 1.2TB ($1,100), 1.6TB ($1,600), and 2TB ($2,300) capacities. The 4-drive SATA solutions are available for $100 in the same capacities. Both the four-drive SATA and FireWire 800/400 enclosures are $500. The two-drive solutions--either SATA or FireWire 800/400--are available in enclosure-only ($300), as well as 600GB ($700), 800GB ($900), 1TB ($1,100) storage capacities.