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Western Digital Debuts New SanDisk PRO-BLADE Modular SSD Ecosystem
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Typically SD cards' random read/write speed is much worse than sequential, even worse than a modern HDD. So while 200MB/s is amazing and sounds good enough to replace an SSD, I wonder if it'll work for running an OS or something.
Thunderbolt 4 also has a lot of other requirements that isn't applicable in this case, like support for two 4K displays and higher requirements for the PC like at least one charging port and wake from sleep support when connected to a Thunderbolt dock.
Depends on if they feel that slapping the name “Professional” on it means they have to test & verify capacities before making claims in advertising.
In that case it could have meant they couldn’t get a market release 8TB drive when this was in the design stage. However this thing is very highly likely to work with all future capacity increases until something changes about the interface or NVMe specs. But it won’t be guaranteed because these capacities weren’t available for testing when it was in pre-build.
If this sells well, they’ll probably release in due time a V2 with updated exterior, updated packaging, updated advertising, but similar (or cheaper) internals.
Software RAID only and usually only if you keep the config. Switching drive locations often messes with the RAID. I’d imagine the G-TECH line (also owned by them) will be reborn with an NVMe RAID eventually.
And up to only 2,000 MB/s so no 16K editing either.
Honestly using when you get these proprietary storage systems they price the HDD/SSD at 2x or 3x the going rate. These have an acceptable markup on the SSD. I might actually take a close look at this system.
I’ve had bad experience with any RAID that relies on software. RAID1, mirroring, is probably the only level I would trust this with, and only if the data on each drive is acessible when put into a different machine. And I’d run a check to verify after purchasing.
If any brave soul was to run RAID0, striping, or any other raid level on this equipment, I don’t think there’s much improvement to be gained. Perhaps between -20% and +30% depending on the type of access.
100% the same experience. Do not trust SoftRAID at all anymore.
I've been looking for a simple JBOD multi-slot desktop drive back-up system and this seems to be potentially the perfect solution. Other option I've been eye-balling is getting a Thunderbolt 3 RAID system from G-Tech or Lacie and swapping the HDD's for SSDs.
NVMe seems overkill for a backup system?
JBOD has dangers as a backup system, especially in removable drive hardware. Many implementations of JBOD destroy the entire array if a single disk fails or is unplugged or swapped over. I've seen RAID manufacturers (Looking at you, Promise) define JBOD = spanning in one document then define JBOD =/= spanning in another document. Not very confidence inspiring as the two definitions have completely different behaviour when a disk fails.
Depends on what you use it for. I never see the point of RAID for speed. So if you were just doing duplicate drives to save from disaster, when you swapped, it would just copy to that new one. Maybe have a warning to not remove one if none of the others have the full data written yet
I am evaluating the upcoming Pro-Blade Station for an Apple M2-based Avid Pro Tools workstation. This unit seems a nice replacement for the 4x HDD slots in an old 5,1 Mac Pro. Configuration will be JBOD: 4TB data, 4TB manual mirror, 2TB sample libraries, 1TB Pro Tools session recording and editing. Hot swap will be nice for swapping sessions, and also creating offsite backups. Hopefully the Pro-Blade Station will arrive soon and have some market success.