Macworld.com by Lynn La

Reliability and multiple RAID options designed for serious content creation pros

While EZQuest’s Thunder RAID eSATA/USB 2.0 Portable System weighs in at a hefty 16 pounds, this portable external RAID storage device has a rather compact build, considering it houses four hard drives that can hold all your striped or mirrored data. It even features a hard aluminum handle so you can lug it around when you’re out of the studio and in the field.

The four hard drives in the Thunder RAID comes pre-configured as RAID 5 (formatted for the Mac), but there are several different supported RAID level options: 0, 1, 3, 5, and 10, as well as JBOD (the unit we tested had four 1.5TB drives).

The Thunder RAID has a dual-interface that allows for a slower-but-convenient USB 2.0 connection, or a speedy eSATA connection. The two included Ethernet ports are used for administration, not for data transfer. The Thunder RAID also has 128MB of DDR2-400 SDRAM and a 400MHz storage I/O processor.

After turning the device on, a loud beep occurs and the fan will immediately begin whirring. Although EZQuest says the fan operates on an “ultra low decibel,” it’s actually quite loud. To help you with setup, the drive also features an LCD display that can show the status of the drive and will indicate to you if a drive failure has occurred, along with a few navigating buttons.

For our tests, copying a 1GB file through a USB 2.0 connection took an average of 53 seconds, and our file duplication test took 1 minute and 7 seconds. In our low-memory Photoshop test, the Thunder RAID took 1 minute and 37 seconds over USB. Using eSATA, copying and duplicating the 1GB file took 23 and 22 seconds, respectively, and the Photoshop test took an average of 51 seconds. read more...