Akitio: Thunderbolt 3 4-Bay Storage Device, Thunder3 Quad

Akitio announced the availability of the Thunder3 Quad.

The Thunder3 Quad is the industry’s first 4-bay, Thunderbolt 3 storage device and was designed to unleash the speed and flexibility of Thunderbolt 3. Developed to handle the data protection and performance requirements for growing media libraries, the Thunder3 Quad offers fast transfers with the added flexibility of a DisplayPort video output in a form factor small enough for a desktop.

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“Large storage solutions are an indispensable component for anyone dealing with large amounts of data such as 4K and 8K uncompressed video files. The revolutionary 40Gb/s bandwidth of Thunderbolt 3 will continue to transform the storage industry,” said Richard Wright, VP, sales and marketing, Akitio. “The Thunder3 Quad will allow users to better store, transfer, save, protect, and edit their creative content while also freeing up valuable space on computers.”

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The Thunder3 Quad can deliver transfer speeds of up to 1,375 MB/s while simultaneously providing two 4K video streams to connected displays, which is not feasible by other common interfaces such as USB due to the limitations of their features and bandwidth. It is for consumers and professionals who desire high speed external storage and/or video streams in one connection.

“Thunderbolt 3 running at 40Gb/s is the fastest connection to the PC, enabling new usages,” said Jason Ziller, director, Thunderbolt marketing, Intel Corp. “Products like Akitio’s Thunder3 Quad highlight the performance and flexibility of Thunderbolt 3 for demanding storage solutions.“

The Thunder3 Quad 4-bay enclosure features two Thunderbolt 3 Ports and a DisplayPort video output to connect to the latest 4K 60Hz displays. The second Thunderbolt 3 port on the Thunder3 Quad 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, the four trays in the Thunder3 Quad are completely flexible in accommodating either 2.5″ SSDs or HDDs, or 3.5″ HDDs, offering users an unparalleled combination of performance and capacity of up to 40TB of storage with drives available in the market.

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It gives Sony Vegas and Adobe Premier 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. The Thunder3 Quad also provides massive storage space for other applications such as Lightworks, Corel VideoStudio, Pinnacle Studio, Cakewalk, Cubase, and ProTools. Multiple Thunder3 Quad enclosures can be daisy-chained together for even more storage capacity.

The Thunder3 Quad will be available in June 2016 with an MSRP of $429.99 for the diskless enclosure.