G-Technology puts SSD RAID in your pocket

Enjoy higher vibration

By Rik Myslewski in San Francisco • Get more from this author

Posted in Hardware, 10th January 2009 04:51 GMT

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Macworld Expo G-Technology announced an exceedingly compact, exceedingly snappy, exceedingly durable, exceedingly expensive portable drive at this week's Macworld Expo.

The solid-state G-RAID mini SSD is available in 250GB and 500GB capacities, can be formatted as either RAID 0 or RAID 1, and has eSATA, FireWire 800, FireWire 400, and USB 2.0 ports.

Macworld Expo 2009 - G-Technology G-RAID mini SSD

Compact, lightweight, fast, and with all the ports you might need

The mini SSD RAID uses the same case as does G-Technology's hard drive-equipped G-RAID mini drives, but since SSD storage is chip-based - nothing to spin, crash, freeze, or vibrate - the drives are, according to G-Technology, able to withstand "extreme shock up to 1500Gs and can endure higher altitudes, vibration and temperatures" than can boring ol' hard drives.

G-Technology promises equally impressive performance. When formatted as RAID 0, the company claims that the G-RAID mini SSD will achieve "up to 195MB/sec data transfer rates" and support "the playback of five simultaneous ProRes 422 HQ streams and a single stream of uncompressed HD when attached via eSATA."

Not too shabby for a drive that measures a mere 14.9- by 8.25- by 3.8-centimeters (5.875- by 3.25- by 1.5-inches) and weighs a svelte quarter of a kilo (8.5 oz.) - despite its case being aluminum rather than lightweight, cheesy plastic.

You will, of course, pay for this durability and performance: the 250GB model will set you back $999 (£655) and the 500GB unit a cool $2199 (£1443).

Too bad the holiday season is over. This little guy would have made a killer stocking-stuffer. ®

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