G-Technology G-SPEED eS Pro Review

The G-SPEED eS Pro is a very high-speed disk drive array that can provide a storage capacity from 3TB to 12TB, depending on the capacity of drives used and whether one or two of the units are deployed. It is designed to support the most data-intensive video applications such as editing uncompressed HD or 2K media.

Features
Each G-SPEED eS Pro unit is constructed around multiple disk drives enclosed in a compact, sturdy aluminum enclosure which is cooled by a very quiet fan. Each unit occupies minimal space, with dimensions of only 8 x 5 x 7 inches.

The G-SPEED eS Pro connects to the NLE host via a six foot locking Mini-SAS cable. This provides very fast data transfer and is inexpensive and easy to install. The G-SPEED eS Pro comes bundled with a PCIe RAID card with two ports and one or two locking mini SAS connection cables (depending on single or dual configuration), each capable of a bandwidth of up to 12Gb/s.

A single G-SPEED eS Pro drive array unit contains four Hitachi 7,200 rpm, 3.5-inch SATA II drives, providing a total maximum storage capacity of about 6TB. You can connect up to two units to the PCI Express RAID control card, thereby achieving a maximum capacity of 12TB. Connecting two units not only provides more capacity, but almost doubles the data transfer speed as well. The G-SPEED eS Pro offers a data read and write speed that is extremely fast–around 650Mb/s even with RAID 5 configuration. This is on par with the speed of Fibre Channel at a fraction of the cost.

A Single G-SPEED eS Pro unit supports multi-stream compressed HD, ProRes 422, and single stream uncompressed HD playback. Two units support dual-stream HD playback and a single stream of 2K.

The G-SPEED eS Pro includes a browser-based GUI that makes it very easy to configure and manage the RAID system. By using the interface, you can configure the system for RAID 0, 1, 3, 5 or 6 depending on the level of data protection desired. read more...