Today at the National Association of Broadcasters, CalDigit announced two new storage solutions. The first is a portable drive series that is designed to survive some rough treatment, the CalDigit Tuff series. The second storage solution announced is a 4-bay PCIe SSD RAID storage device, the T4 nano.
Today at the National Association of Broadcasters, CalDigit announced two new storage solutions. The first is a portable drive series that is designed to survive some rough treatment, the CalDigit Tuff series. The second storage solution announced is a 4-bay PCIe SSD RAID storage device, the T4 nano.
Tuff
The Tuff series is a portable drive that is aimed at professionals that need to save and backup their work in the field, photographers and filmmakers. It is along the line of products such as LaCie’s Rugged drives and G-TECH’s ev RaW and ev ATC. The Tuff is dust, impact, and water resistant. Where it sets itself apart is that it used USB-C interface, like the interface on the new MacBook (the only interface on the new MacBook actually). The Tuff features USB 3.1 but is backward compatible with all previous versions of USB. The drive also comes with a USB-C to A cable enabling it to work with any Mac or PC.
The Tuff supports both 2.5” HDDs and SSDs. The SSD models have achieved speeds up to 450MB/s on the latest MacBook, and CalDigit claims that future computer that use USB 3.1 interface will see a speed increase up to 550MB/s. The next generation interface will give the drive a bandwidth of 10Gb/s. The Tuff series features a maximum capacity of 2TB with an HDD and 1TB with a SSD. The drive is bus powered through its USB-C interface and will have a Tuff Dock that will allow users to work on their files directly on the Tuff drives.
T4 nano
The T4 nano is a 4-bay PCIe SSD RAID storage device with Thunderbolt 2 connectivity. The device is aimed at professionals that need high performance for workflows such as 4K. CalDigit claims that the T4 nano has a performance of 1,375MB/s, which is ideal for content creators. The device also has an HDMI output so the users can connect directly to a HDMI display.
The T4 nano supports RAID0, 1, 5, and JBOD and 2TB of capacity. It has a small form factor and quiet performance so it can sit on desktops without being noticed. The thunderbolt 2 connectivity allows up to 6 devices to be daisy-chained together. CalDigit is offering a one-time upgrade program that will allow owners of the T4 nano to upgrade the interface connectivity of the unit when a future iteration of the unit becomes available.
Availability and pricing
The Tuff will be available in July 2015 starting at $139.99. The T4 nano will be available in the third quarter of 2015 and will start at $2,499.99 for the 2TB PCIe SSD version.
