Sans Digital: New 5-Bay External TowerRAID

Sans Digital, a leading provider of high performance storage subsystems, has updated its 5-bay external TowerRAID TR5M1 RAID storage solution to the newly designed TR5M-B and TR5M. Based on the same features as the previous models, these new towers adapted a more sophisticated outer shell in both black and silver, completing the unified appearance of the TowerRAID series.

Since its initial release, the Sans Digital TowerRAID series has generated some heated discussions on computer enthusiast sites, especially sites dedicated to Windows Home Servers and Home Theater PC (HTPC). The TowerRAID solutions are proven to be good choices for direct external storage expansion where additional capacity is needed. The TowerRAID series is now fully compatible with the newest 1.5TB hard drives. With up to 7.5TB of storage capacity, the 5-bay storage enclosures are perfect for high capacity storage needs. The TR5M-B and TR5M units utilize a cable-less backplane design and built-in ventilating protective screen front panel for a simplified contemporary design. Hard drives are installed on easily accessible hard drive trays for easy insertion and removal. Hard drive cooling is performed by a large 4.7" built-in cooling fan located inside the back panel of the units. Like other models of the TowerRAID series, the TR5M-B and TR5M utilize the latest SATA II port multiplier technology to access five SATA hard drives using only one eSATA cable.

The units are conveniently packaged with a 2-port eSATA PCIe adapter at no additional cost. The included PCIe adapter allows seamless port-multiplier compatibility with RAID options in JBOD, 0, 1, 1+0 and 5 with spare. PCI and PCI-X options are available in situations where PCIe is not available on the host machine.

"Removable hard drive trays and single cable connection allows easy setup, integration and removal," stated Grandy Chen, Sans Digital’s President. "The various TowerRAID models from 2-bay to 8-bay allow flexible storage expansion with RAID capability based on the storage capacity desired."