Akitio: Thunder3 Duo Pro External RAID

Akitio unveiled the Thunder3 Duo Pro, a hardware RAID and display dock solution designed to unleash the groundbreaking speed and simplicity of Thunderbolt 3.

Developed to handle the data protection and performance requirements for today’s ever-growing media libraries, the Thunder3 Duo Pro offers fast transfers with the added flexibility of a DisplayPort video output in a form factor small enough for a desktop.

“Thunderbolt 3 will be transformational for the industry,” said Richard Wright, VP sales and marketing, Akitio. “The revolutionary 40Gb/s bandwidth will drive storage innovation to better transfer, save, protect, and edit photos, videos, music and other extremely large files and free up valuable space on computers.“

Utilizing Thunderbolt 3, the Thunder3 Duo Pro can deliver transfer speeds up to 770 MB/s while simultaneously providing two 4K video streams to connected displays, roughly 8x faster than USB 3.1 Gen 1 and 4x faster than USB 3.1 Gen 2. Thunder3 Duo Pro is for consumers and professionals who desire high capacity external storage with RAID support and data protection.

“We’re thrilled to see such strong PC adoption for Thunderbolt 3,” said Jason Ziller, director, Thunderbot marketing, Intel Corp. “With unmatched transfer speeds, support for multiple 4K displays, notebook charging, and compatibility with existing I/O technologies, Thunderbolt 3 is setting a new bar for the industry.“

Thunder3 Duo Pro is offered as a two-bay RAID enclosure supporting four RAID modes (RAID-0 striping, RAID-1 mirroring, SPAN, and Non-RAID). It features two Thunderbolt 3 ports, a USB 3.1 Gen 1 (Type-B) port, and a DisplayPort video output to connect the latest 4K 60HZ displays. The second Thunderbolt 3 port on the Thunder3 Duo Pro operates the same as a Thunderbolt 3 computer port by supporting Thunderbolt 3 (up to 5 daisy chained), USB 3.1 (10Gb/s), and DisplayPort devices.

For added convenience, it can accommodate 2.5″ SSD/HDD and 3.5″HDD drives. Thunder3 Duo Pro is completely ‘tool-less’, so drives can be installed or uninstalled. It can run fanless (zero decibels) when needed making it the choice for home and professional audio recording when SSDs are installed.

Thunder3 Duo Pro gives Sony Vegas and Adobe Premier Pro users the ability to edit and playback multiple streams of HD and/or 4K content with enough headroom to daisy chain multiple 4K displays simultaneously. It provides massive storage space for other popular applications such as Lightworks, Corel VideoStudio, Pinnacle Studio, Cakewalk, Cubase, and ProTools. Connect multiple Thunder3 Duo Pro enclosures together for even more storage capacity.

The Thunder3 Duo Pro will be available in Q1’16 from the company starting at $389 for the enclosure only (no drives installed).

Thunderbolt 3 brings Thunderbolt to USB-C at speeds up to 40Gb/s, creating one compact port that does it all – delivering the fastest, most versatile connection to any dock, display, or data device. For the first time, one computer port connects to Thunderbolt devices, every display, and billions of USB devices. A single cable now provides four times the data and twice the video bandwidth of any other cable, while also supplying power.