Trans international Inc. on Thursday announced its miniG series of storage devices. The drives use styling cues borrowed from Apple’s Power Mac G5 desktop computers, and use FireWire 400, FireWire 800 and Serial ATA (SATA) interfaces. They’re coming in August.
The miniG systems are made from tempered aircraft aluminum and use an external power supply. Available in single, two and four-drive configurations, the four-drive miniG also features an internal cooling fan. They’re compatible with Macs and PCs and can be configured through software as RAID Level 0 and 1 systems as well.
The miniG FireWire series include the single-drive F400 system, which includes FireWire 400 and capacities from 300 to 500GB, from US$299 to $599 depending on capacity. Drive mechanisms operate at 7200RPM and feature 8 or 16MB data caches, depending on capacity. Trans measures the transfer rate of the F400 at up to 38MB/sec.
The miniG FireWire F800 system uses a two-drive or four-drive design and feature data transfer up to 80MB per second. You can use them as a JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks) configuration or use software to configure them as a RAID system. The two-drive F800 system features a single 6-pin FireWire 400 connection and two 9-pin FireWire 800 interfaces. Both drives feature Dantz Retrospect Express backup software and Intech Speed Tools.
The 2-disk miniG F800 is available in 600, 800GB and 1 terabyte (TB) capacities for $699, $899 and $1,099 respectively. The 4 disk system is available in 1.2, 1.6 and 2.0TB capacities for $1,099, $1,599 and $2,299 respectively.
Trans also makes two-drive and four-drive external SATA miniG configurations. The 2 drive SATA system can transfer data at more than 100MB/sec, while the four-drive system can manage more than 200MB/sec. The two-drive miniG SATA is available in 600GB, 800GB and 1TB capacities for $699, $899 and $1,099 respectively. The four-drive SATA miniG is available in 1.2TB, 1.6TB and 2TB capacities for $1,199, $1,699 and $2,399 respectively.
If you like the look of the miniG but you’d prefer to supply your own ATA or SATA drive mechanisms,. Trans Intl also sells the enclosures alone. The two-drive F800 and SATA enclosures costs $299. The four-drive F800 and SATA enclosures cost $499. The single-drive F400 enclosure costs $129.