HGST Announces New G-Technology G-RAID Enclosures

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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.

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Paul Alcorn
Paul Alcorn
Managing Editor: News and Emerging Tech

Paul Alcorn is the Managing Editor: News and Emerging Tech for Tom's Hardware US. He also writes news and reviews on CPUs, storage, and enterprise hardware.

9 Comments Comment from the forums
  • thundervore
    "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."

    Ouch!!

    A few years back I build a 24TB RAID setup for less. 8 x 3TB SATA 3 retail drives with 3 year warranty each for $99 a piece and the 8 bay SATA 3 RAID enclosure with Esata and USB3 was only ~ $120.

    I guess this is only for corporations that have money to burn
    Reply
  • Takasis007
    Just in time for USB 3.1 to be out and destroy the 3.0 transfer bandwidth.
    Reply
  • tastyKake
    Some of these markups these companies get away with are insane. I understand you have to make money, but these prices really don't justify it. I mean on their website, the HDD description is "2) Enterprise Class 7200RPM SATA III". No brands/specs just generic text. 8TB with unknown HDDs on a non-networked USB interface for $600.

    But it's obvious who they are targeting with this product. The product's design says it all and I'm sure it'll be a perfect match looking pretty next to another overpriced office computer with extremely similar looks.
    Reply
  • Fooblob
    "No brands/specs just generic text. 8TB with unknown HDDs"
    I'm going to take a stab in the dark and guess the disks are HGST
    Reply
  • ralanahm
    Thank you for the HI-res pictures I love them., you can almost see the photographer in the screw reflections. I love to save them for later use, but normally I post in sizes from around .5-MB to 1-MB unless it going to be printed for a meeting.
    Do you have the Nikon D800 for a review?
    Reply
  • ethanolson
    If I were a pro creative professional (photographer or videographer) I'd totally have one of these and run RAID 1 on it. Lots of money but lots of performance and reliability.
    Reply
  • dgraham1284
    Having worked for these corporations with "money to burn." What kind of support plan does your DYI system have? 24x7x4? Nothing? While for the consumer, DYI may be less expensive, these "corporations with money to burn" need support on their mission critical items.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    15364073 said:
    Thank you for the HI-res pictures I love them., you can almost see the photographer in the screw reflections. I love to save them for later use, but normally I post in sizes from around .5-MB to 1-MB unless it going to be printed for a meeting.
    Do you have the Nikon D800 for a review?
    I'm going to guess these shots were supplied by the manufacturer. You can often go to the press section of manufacturer's websites and find high-res photos of their products suitable for print use.

    Whether they shot them or just D/L'd them, it's nice that the originals were seemingly posted, instead of downsampled & recompressed copies.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    15364204 said:
    If I were a pro creative professional (photographer or videographer) I'd totally have one of these and run RAID 1 on it. Lots of money but lots of performance and reliability.
    But why wouldn't you just put two HDDs inside your computer? You'd save money and get even more performance. Do you need to switch your storage back & forth between computers? Or do you need to use this with a laptop?

    If 10 Gigabit Ethernet prices would come down quicker, then a small NAS would be an even better solution.
    Reply