Nah, WiebeTech's latest
RAID enclosures can't quite offer up the internal storage capacity seen on
Novac's iterations, but the RT5 and RT5e still pack an awful lot of capacity with a handle on top. The RT5 packs a nice variety of connection options, as users will find twin FireWire 800 ports along with one eSATA and USB 2.0 connector to boot, and there should be enough room in there to cram "up to 2TB" of HDDs for on-the-go redundancy. The RT5e differs ever-so-slightly by giving us the means to stuff five 750GB IDE drives in the case, leaving you with up to 3.75TB of space to read / write on via the sole eSATA jack. The enclosures sport five reloadable, lockable drive trays, a rugged exterior that shouldn't suffer from minor bumps and bruises, and while an empty rendition will run you $1,699.95,
WiebeTech will gladly sell 'em pre-populated for anywhere from $2,259.95 to a steep $4,149.95 depending on drive selections.
[Via
Macworld]
posted May 4th 2007 7:10AM
This is great for capacity, but if WiebeTech makes a 1.2TB 2.5" HDD version, it would truly be portable rather than a small suitcase. I'm waiting for the smaller 2.5" version with a Gigabit Ethernet NAS interface too...
Why couldn't one load it with 1TB drives?
I don't quite understand the comparison to the Novac enclosures. WiebeTech's RT5 products offer RAID 5 support while the Novac enclosure only offer RAID 0 and 1. As for capacity... they both hold 5 drives. Last I checked, 5 times 750GB equals 3.75TB no matter which enclosure you're using.
You couldn't load it with 1TB drives because this enclosure takes IDE disks and the 1TB disks are SATA.
That being said, this is a ridiculously overpriced solution - For 1600 clams they better include network attached connectivity as well.
The Theives and Burglars Association of America thank you for making it even easier to steal massive amounts of data and cool electronics.
I'd recommend Infrant's (now NetGear as of yesterday) NV+. *Much* cheaper than WiebeTech's box, and supports RAID 0, 1, 5, and X-RAID (eXpandable RAID, which allows you to increase capacity in the future by replacing each disc one at a time). Enclosure is ~$650, and prepopulated configurations start at ~$1000 for 1TB.
It's probably hard to put into print how stout that enclosure is - wiebetech's enclosures are generally made out of heavy duty alluminum. There's a handle on it for a reason - most enclosures I wouldn't want to transport, but if I needed to transport a lot of data, this is the way I'd do it. There's probably no reason why it won't work with 1GB IDE drives when they become available.