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CalDigit announces Thunderbolt Station 2
CalDigit makes some amazingly fast disk drives and arrays, usually featuring fast Thunderbolt or Thunderbolt 2 connections to speed your data back and forth. Today the company announced the CalDigit Thunderbolt Station 2 (US$199.99, pre-order for $169.99), a new docking station that goes a bit further than the Belkin Thunderbolt 2 Express Dock HD we reviewed earlier this month. Most of the Thunderbolt 2 docks we've seen are similar, with three USB 3.0 ports, audio in/out ports, a pair of Thunderbolt 2 ports, an HDMI adapter, and a LAN adapter. CalDigit's dock adds a pair of 6 Gb/second eSATA ports, perfect for those Mac users who have accumulated a few eSATA peripherals over the years. The CalDigit Thunderbolt Station 2 also flips between vertical and horizontal orientations easily, has double the warranty of the Belkin and Elgato Thunderbolt 2 docks, and is the least expensive of the bunch at a full $100 less than the suggested retail price of the Belkin dock. The only thing missing is an actual Thunderbolt cable, which you'll need to connect the dock to your Mac. Mac users with tons of speedy peripherals will want to take a look at the CalDigit Thunderbolt Station 2 when it arrives. Pre-orders until January 15, 2015 take an extra $30 off of the price, so it's a heck of a deal.
Test driving Belkin's Thunderbolt 2 Express Dock HD
A number of other Apple-related websites have announced the release of Elgato's Thunderbolt 2 dock today; here at TUAW, we'll be doing a full hands-on review of the Belkin Thunderbolt 2 Express Dock HD (US$299.99) as well as a giveaway of our review unit. If you use a Thunderbolt 2-equipped MacBook Pro with Retina Display, Mac Pro, or Mac mini, or you're planning for a future with Thunderbolt 2, check out Belkin's latest expansion dock. Specifications Ports: Gigabit Ethernet, headphone, headphone/microphone, 3x USB 3.0 SuperSpeed ports, 2x Thunderbolt 2 ports, HDMI port. Display support: Supports dual displays and 4K cinema resolution Design Like its predecessor the Belkin Thunderbolt Express Dock, the Thunderbolt 2 Express Dock HD is made out of a shiny piece of aluminum designed to match the finish of your Mac and Thunderbolt Display. On the back of the device you'll find most of the ports - Ethernet, headphone, two USB 3.0 ports, the two Thunderbolt 2 ports, the HDMI port and a power connection. On the front are two ports - USB 3.0 and a microphone/headphone port. I found the placement of the USB 3.0 port on the front to be quite odd - why not make that a Thunderbolt 2 port, since many users would want to use the shortest possible cable connection between the side of a MacBook Pro with Retina display and the Express Dock. While the dock does support dual displays and 4K displays, it can only handle a single 4K display at one time. If you're running two displays, at least one of them has to be Thunderbolt or Thunderbolt 2 compatible, while the other can connect via HDMI. If you have a Mini DisplayPort-compatible monitor, it can be plugged into a Thunderbolt 2 port ... but you can only have one Mini DisplayPort monitor or an HDMI display, not both at the same time. And one nice little feature to end of the design portion of this review - Belkin includes a 1M (3 foot) Thunderbolt cable with the dock. Functionality I tested the Thunderbolt 2 Express Dock HD with a MacBook Pro with Retina Display, the CalDigit T4 RAID I reviewed yesterday, an external HDMI monitor, and a USB 3.0 hard disk drive. The device is very much plug-and-play; you just plug things into the proper ports, and everything is taken care of. Some simple testing of file transfer speeds both to the CalDigit T4 and my external USB 3.0 drive showed absolutely no drop in throughput as the result of having the Express Dock HD "in the middle". Likewise, the external monitor came up immediately when connected to the HDMI port. There were no issues, even when unplugging the HDMI cable and plugging it back in shortly thereafter. It was just like plugging an HDMI cable right into the MacBook Pro. The Ethernet port also worked with no extra driver required. When plugged into the Express Dock HD, the Ethernet port immediately showed up as another network adapter. If you're going to use the Express Dock HD Ethernet adapter as your primary method of connectivity, it's useful to move it to the top of the "service order" by going to System Preferences > Network and selecting "Set Service Order" from the pop-up menu found below the list of network services. The testing was done with the MacBook Pro running OS X 10.10 Yosemite; the device will also work with OS X 10.9 Mavericks, but 4K resolution monitors aren't supported with the older OS. Conclusion The Belkin Thunderbolt 2 Express Dock HD is a well-designed unit that's perfect for anyone who needs to connect a Mac with a variety of peripherals with a single Thunderbolt cable. However, the price of the Belkin unit is $70 higher than the almost-identical Elgato dock introduced today, which makes the Elgato product immediately more attractive to potential buyers. Rating: 3 stars out of 4 stars possible Giveaway Now, let's give a TUAW reader the opportunity for connectivity! Belkin and TUAW are giving away a Thunderbolt 2 Express Dock HD. Here are the rules for the giveaway: Open to legal US residents of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia and Canada (excluding Quebec) who are 18 and older. To enter, fill out the form below completely and click or tap the Submit button. The entry must be made before December 6, 2014 11:59PM Eastern Standard Time. You may enter only once. One winner will be selected in a random drawing and will receive a Belkin Thunderbolt 2 Express Dock HD valued at $299.99 Click Here for complete Official Rules. Loading...
CalDigit T4 RAID: Big, fast storage in a compact enclosure
Speed and storage capacity are the qualities that creative professionals look for in a RAID array, and they're willing to pay a lot for the ability to store huge amounts of video or photographs on a fast and redundant unit. CalDigit is now shipping a very affordable 4-bay storage solution called the T4 RAID that comes in a variety of capacities: 4 TB (US$899), 8 TB ($1,199), 12 TB ($1,399), 16 TB ($1,699), 20 TB ($1,999) or 4 TB SSD ($3,299). I had a chance to put a T4 through our standard benchmarks and found it to be a speedy, quiet and sturdy high-capacity RAID array. Specifications Weight: 7.2 lb. (3.3 Kg) with 4 SSD installed, 12.5 lb. (5.65 Kg) with 4 HDD installed Dimensions: 5.8 x 5.3 x 9.5 inches (148 x 135 x 242 mm) Interface: Two Thunderbolt 2 ports with transfer rates up to 20 GB/s RAID: Supports RAID 0,1,5 and JBOD, auto disk failure detection, hot swappable disks Design The T4 is surprisingly small for a 4-disk RAID array. The entire case is machined out of aluminum, with an appearance similar to that of the T3 3-drive array that I reviewed earlier this year. As with the T3, the drives (either SSDs or HDDs) come in proprietary drive modules. Those drive modules come in a variety of sizes: hard disk drives in capacities of 1 TB ($129), 2 TB ($179), 3 TB ($229), 4 TB ($299), 5 TB ($399), and a 1 TB SSD ($799). These drive modules are also compatible with the CalDigit T3 and the AVPro. There are some tiny keys that are included to lock the drive modules into place for extra security, and there's a Kensington lock slot on the back of the case. Both are nice physical security features that aren't commonly found on other RAID arrays. The small size comes at the cost of a good-sized external power supply; usually, that's going to sit under your desk with all of the other power supplies. Although the T4 has a built-in fan to keep those drives cool, it's surprisingly quiet. During testing the drive was about two feet away from me at ear level and all I could hear was a faint white noise. This was an 12 TB HDD configuration that was tested, and there was absolutely no drive noise that I could discern. With a quiet drive like this, you'll want to have some indication that it's actually working and a set of tiny blue LEDs on the front of the array perform that task without being too bright or distracting. CalDigit includes a monitoring app that's also useful for setting up your array. That app includes some useful tools for benchmarking video throughput to the drive. Functionality/Benchmarks Like the T3, the CalDigit T4 is easy to set up. You simply plug a Thunderbolt cable into your Mac and into one of the two Thunderbolt 2 ports on the back of the T4. Plug in the AC adapter, then plug the cable from the power supply into the T4. Turn on the T4 with the front-mounted power button and it spins right up. The array can be set up as RAID 0 (stripe set), RAID 1 (mirror set), RAID 5 (block-level striping with distributed parity) or in a JBOD ("just a bunch of disk") array with no RAID functionality. Our benchmarking was done with the array set up in RAID 0 with a total volume size of 10.914 TB (four 3 TB drives installed). For the purposes of testing external drives and RAID arrays, we traditionally use the Intech SpeedTools QuickBench 4.0.6 app to run multiple cycles of read/write tests. The T4 was directly connected to a MacBook Pro with Retina display using an Apple Thunderbolt cable. This MacBook Pro was equipped with Thunderbolt 2 ports. To ensure accuracy in testing, I performed a 100-cycle complete test. This subjects the drive to sequential and random read and write tests with file sizes from 4K to 100 MB, then graphically or textually displays that information to show the "sweet spots" for a specific drive or array. For example, if your work involves shuffling around a lot of very large files, you'll probably want a drive that has peak read/write speeds for files around your average file size. Here are the test results for a RAID 0 stripe set, compared with the T3 using a Thunderbolt connection: Sequential Read: 324.063 MB/Sec (313.917 MB/Sec for CalDigit T3 connected via Thunderbolt) Sequential Write: 303.615 MB/Sec (279.731 MB/Sec for CalDigit T3 connected via Thunderbolt) Random Read: 92.613 MB/Sec (69.402 MB/Sec for CalDigit T3 connected via Thunderbolt) Random Write: 74.876 MB/Sec (62.263 MB/Sec for CalDigit T3 connected via Thunderbolt) Large Read: 906.819 MB/Sec (538.599 MB/Sec for CalDigit T3 connected via Thunderbolt) Large Write: 1045.913 MB/Sec (763.516 MB/Sec for CalDigit T3 connected via Thunderbolt) Extended Read: 739.724 MB/Sec (552.096 MB/Sec for CalDigit T3 connected via Thunderbolt) Extended Write: 671.629 MB/Sec (553.392 MB/Sec for CalDigit T3 connected via Thunderbolt) Now the CalDigit T3 was our previous speed demon for RAID arrays tested by TUAW, and the T4 blows right past it. The first four results - done with extremely small files - show an improvement over the T3 of up to about 33 percent in the case of random file reads. But it's with the large (2 - 10 MB) and extended (20 - 100 MB) file sizes that we really see the T4 take off. The large read test was 68 percent faster than the T3, large writes were 36 percent faster. The average large write test result was 1045.913 MB/sec, the first time we've seen a RAID array result in this range. Extended file reads and writes were also improved over the T3, with a 34 percent improvement in read speeds and 21 percent faster writes. What does this mean? Well, the T4 is perfect in those situations where you're going to be reading and writing large files a lot; not so much with those smaller files. For professionals who do a lot of video or photographic work, connecting the CalDigit T4 up to a Mac Pro or MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt 2 makes a lot of sense and can speed up almost any workflow. CalDigit is targeting the T4 for those who are working on 4K video production, and I can see where it would be perfect for those large files and big data streams. Conclusion CalDigit has outdone itself with the T4 RAID, creating a fast RAID array at a price point that isn't out of the realm of any creative professional who needs big storage. The addition of Thunderbolt 2 to the new array improves throughput for those who have Macs with the new interface built in. I was impressed by the CalDigit T3 earlier this year, but the T4 surpasses its smaller sibling in every way. Rating: 4 stars out of 4 stars possible
Belkin intros new Thunderbolt 2 Express Dock HD
Mac users who have those speedy Thunderbolt 2 ports on their MacBook Pro with Retina display or Mac Pro now have a wonderful new way to increase the connectivity of their devices. Belkin today released the Thunderbolt 2 Express Dock HD (US$299.99), which allows up to eight separate devices to be connected to a Mac through a single Thunderbolt cable. Thunderbolt 2 is twice as fast as Thunderbolt, four times faster than USB 3.0, and a whopping 25 times faster than FireWire 800. The Thunderbolt 2 Express Dock HD features two Thunderbolt 2 ports, one HDMI port, three USB 3.0 ports with charging support, one audio port, another audio out port with mic support, and a gigabit Ethernet port. There's also one AC/DC power input. The dock will support dual displays when one display is a Thunderbolt display, and can support 4K cinema resolution on one display. Up to five Thunderbolt devices can be daisy-chained from the Thunderbolt 2 Express Dock HD. If the Thunderbolt 2 Express Dock HD sounds like it's right up your alley, it's available for pre-order today and should be in Apple Stores in October. Belkin expects the dock to be available in other retail stores in November.
Thunderbolt 2 Networking enables 10 Gbps Ethernet connection, supports Macs and PCs
Intel's Thunderbolt 2 connectivity standard is getting an update here at NAB 2014 with the addition of Thunderbolt Networking. Put simply, this new feature will let you pair computers with a Thunderbolt cable, with throughput of 10 Gbps between the two machines for super-fast file-sharing. Additionally, thanks to a driver currently available on OS X Mavericks, you'll be able to connect a Mac to a PC (or Mac to Mac) with the new technology. Of course, the ability to quickly transfer data between PCs is important to filmmakers and photographers -- especially those working with 4K footage. Intel's on hand here with a demo that will likely mimic the workflow of the media types at this show. Update: We dropped by Intel for a transfer speed demo, which you'll find after the break. Additionally, Intel clarified that Thunderbolt Networking has been available in Mavericks for some time, but this upcoming update will enable connectivity between Macs and PCs, as well as two Windows machines.
Ship date for built-to-order Mac Pro slips to February; fully loaded config tops $18K
' Three words: pent-up demand. That is what's behind the quick jump from a label of "shipping in December" to "shipping to February" if you're trying to order a Mac Pro configured to your specifications on the Apple online store. The way the backlog has increased in just a few short hours has us believing that the ship dates may slip even more. If you want one of these towers of power soon, heading to your local Apple Store with credit card in hand may be your best option. Speaking of configuring a Mac Pro to order, a quick calculation using the online configurator tool showed that selecting the "power user's" option for every item that can go into one of the little cylinders can add up quickly. Grabbing a six-core and dual-GPU model and then tricking it out with 12 cores, 64 GB of memory, 1 TB of flash storage, dual AMD FirePro D700 GPUs with 6 GB of VRAM, a 32-inch Sharp 4K display, a Magic Trackpad, an Apple Wireless Keyboard and an AppleCare Protection Plan will set you back US$13,581. While you're at it, you may as well add on a black 2.0 meter Thunderbolt cable and a PROMISE Pegasus2 32TB Thunderbolt 2 RAID system. Now you're up to a cool $18,219. Fortunately, many creative professionals have been saving their pennies for this day and can write off the equipment purchase as a business expense...
Promise Technology intros first Thunderbolt 2 storage solutions
Whether you just picked up one of the new MacBook Pros with Retina display or you're waiting for the debut of the Mac Pro later this year, there's good news for those who want to take advantage of the ultra-fast Thunderbolt 2 ports built into the new hardware. Promise Technology has introduced two Thunderbolt 2 storage solutions that boast input/output speeds of up to 20 Gbps. The Pegasus2 Series comes in four-, six- and eight-bay versions housing up to 32 TB of raw capacity. The RAID enclosure supports RAID levels 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50 and 60. Promise also introduced the SANLink2 Thunderbolt Fibre Channel bridge, perfect for connecting portable and desktop systems up to high-speed Fibre Channel SAN. The SANLink2 box delivers dual 8 Gbps fibre channel ports, and the two 20 Gbps Thunderbolt 2 ports support DisplayPort and Device Daisy-Chaining. Both products will be available through the online Apple Store and Promise VARs and distributors. The Pegasus2 devices should be available next month, while the SANLink2 bridge will be arriving in December.
Daily Update for June 5, 2013
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
