Sans Digital MobileSTOR: 4-Bay RAID and JBOD Towers

Sans Digital is announcing its MobileSTOR series of storage products with USB 3.0, eSATA and Firewire 800/400 in a 4-bay tray-less storage tower.

The MS4CT+ (in silver color) has built-in hardware RAID (RAID 0,1,3,5) along with 3 different interfaces (USB 3.0, eSATA and Firewire 800/400). The MS4UT+ (silver color) and MS4UT+B (black color) both provides USB 3.0 and eSATA along with built-in hardware RAID while MS4UM+ (silver color) and MS4UM+B (black color) is an entry level product with USB 3.0 and eSATA in JBOD only configuration.

The MobileSTOR storage units are designed with features such as the instant RAID availability that allows immediate access to the storage unit without the need to wait for RAID initialization. A RAID mode configuration switch is physically located in the front of the unit enabling RAID setup without the need for software utility. The Status LEDs in the front of the unit provides real-time RAID health status.

The MobileSTOR 4 bay enclosure uses a tray-less designed for quick access to the hard disks.

Environmentally friendly features such as the temperature controlled cooling fan automatically increase air flow when temperature rises to above-normal threshold and decreases when temperature drops below normal operating temperature. The stand-by mode on the MobileSTOR power sync feature puts the unit under stand-by mode when the host computer is turned-off or is in a power-saving sleep mode. This power saving feature helps to decrease the power consumption of the MobileSTOR from 35W in idle mode down to 2.2W yielding a 97% saving in power consumption.

The USB 3.0 provides 10x more bandwidth in comparison to the existing USB 2.0. By incorporating this technology, all 3 models are capable of reaching performance speeds 5x faster than the previous USB 2.0 models. For computers not equipped with USB 3.0 interface, the USB 3.0 is also backwards compatible with USB interface allowing flexible deployment.

If needed, customers can also choose to purchase the optional USB 3.0 PCIe host bus adapter (HA-SAN-2U3PCIE) for computer without USB 3.0 port. Using USB 3.0, the MS4CT+ and MS4UT+(B) supports data transfer rate of up to 200MB/sec in RAID5 in comparison to the typical 15-25MB/sec for USB 2.0. Similar data transfer performance can also be achieved using the eSATA interface (Up to 200MB/sec).

And since the RAID engine on the MS4CT+ and MS4UT+(B) are built-in to the unit, there is virtually no device driver compatibility issue normally associated with OS on HBA requiring additional HBA driver and management software installation. The additional Firewire800 interface on the MobileSTOR is also Mac friendly allowing instant connectivity to data storage.

With USB 3.0, eSATA and FireWire800 plus RAID data protection (MS4CT+ & MS4UT+(B), the new MobileSTOR series product can integrate to any PC, MAC computer with setup to provide additional data storage capacity.

"The latest MobileSTOR series products are designed by combining the best features form the popular TowerRAID series along with environmentally friendly energy-saving functions to deliver the best storage tower in the market with excellent performance, value and versatility," said Stanley Chan, Director of Business Development, Sans Digital.

Note: The use of SATA HDD drive with dual-controller storage model requires Qmux board for each HDD used.