G-Technology was showing off a new ev Bay Adapter for its G-SPEED Studio arrays at NAB 2015. Although the adapter has not yet been officially announced, it is close enough in the pipeline that they allowed me to grab some photos and talk about the upcoming adapter.
The G-Drive ev drives can be used as portable drives with a USB 3.0 connection or even a Thunderbolt connection with the new rugged drive carrier. They can also be docked into the G-Dock ev and, soon, the G-SPEED Studio arrays.
Over the past couple years, G-Technology has continued to build up its ev line of products, which started with the 2-bay G-Dock ev. (Read the G-Dock ev Review.) My one complaint about the G-Dock ev was that it did not make sense for most people to set up a RAID 0 array, from which you would get the most speed benefits of the Thunderbolt connectivity.
The upcoming ev Bay Adapter for G-SPEED Studio arrays, however, is the perfect application for the ev drives. For example, the 8-bay G-SPEED Studio allows you to configure six of the bays in RAID 5 for speed and data integrity with data rates still in the 1GB/s range, while leaving two bays open in JBOD configuration with ev Bay Adapters in place.
This will allow you to connect individual G-Drive ev drives into the ev Bay Adapters and off-load files to your larger RAID array. Plus, you’re still using a single Thunderbolt 2 connection for your RAID 5 array and your separate G-Drive ev drives that you mount.
This ev Bay Adapter really brings the ev family together and makes the G-SPEED Studio even more versatile than it already is. Pricing should be nominal for G-SPEED Studio users and there is even talk of including the adapters with future versions of the G-SPEED Studio.
Stay tuned for details on the ev Bay Adapter when it is officially announced.
