The large performance benefits of SATA engineering have never been more apparent than with the G - RAID miniskirt . This portable speed title-holder looks like a shrunken translation of the troupe ’s full - size G - RAID framework , right down to the Oxford 924 controller . Featuring an atomic number 13 chassis designed to mix in with a Mac Pro or G5 tower , this fast — but pricey — triple - port , portable foray packs enough power to handle the heftier data - juggling tasks typically set aside for desktop drives . With two high - execution 7,200 - revolutions per minute SATA mechanism tamp into a tiny distance , the incorporate , somewhat noisy fan mount on the bottom of the chassis is a requirement .
Internally , the G - RAID miniskirt ’s thrust are hardwired in a RAID 0 ( ransack ) arrangement and come formatted as a single Macintosh bulk The driving force mounts at once on your Mac ’s background when you stop up it into an available FireWire 400 , FireWire 800 , or USB larboard .
A 2d FireWire 800 port — a standard feature on many triplex - interface drive — reserve for a coinciding connection to other FireWire devices . fill in the illusion that the driveway could have been an Apple creation , the included data point cable look selfsame to the white cables that ship with a Mac . The G - RAID mini can engage on FireWire bus power , and a small AC adapter is ply for consumption with a USB connection .
Not only was the G - RAID miniskirt the top performer among the portable driveway we ’ve looked at of late , it encroached into desktop territory , winning two out of three tests against the top - performing Western Digital MyBook Pro Edition 500 GB desktop drive ( ) . Among portable drive , the G - RAID mini edged out the LaCie Little Big Disk ( ) in the copy examination , beating it by 10 percentage in both the duplicate and Photoshop tests .
timed trials
Scale = Minutes : secondment
How We prove : We run away all test with the FireWire drive plug in to a dual-2.5GHz Power Mac G5 with Mac OS X 10.4.8 installed and 1 GB of RAM . We essay the drive using FireWire 800 . ( In fount where a drive does not have FireWire 800 , we use FireWire 400 . ) We copied a folder carry 1 GB of data from our Mac ’s laborious drive to the external surd thrust to try the drive ’s write speed . We then duplicate that file on the external drive to test both register and indite speeds . We also used the effort as a clams disk when run our lowly - memory Adobe Photoshop CS Suite trial . This run is a set of four tasks perform on a 150 megabyte Indian file , with Photoshop ’s computer storage set to 25 percent.—Macworld Lab Testing by James Galbraith and Jerry Jung
specifications
Macworld’s buying advice
If you ’re a video or audio editor seeking desktop performance in a portable package , the G - RAID mini is the drive to beat when it comes to amphetamine . Its smart aluminum styling , flexible triple connection , and superb performance make it a winner . Portable drive should be seen and not heard , and that ’s the G - RAID mini ’s one flaw — it generate some rooter randomness — a issue of the trade - off betweentinyandfast . The G - RAID miniskirt is also offered in 160 GB and 320 GB capacities , as well as sluggish and less expensive 5,400 - revolutions per minute versions .
[ Jeffy Milstead is aMacworld Labalumnus and author living in San Francisco . ]
