Sony has announced a new line of professional portable hard disc arrays with the PSZ-RA4T and the PSZ-RA6T. Designed to move around 4K UHD video content, both models feature a built-in carrying handle to add to the portability factor, making them useful for video productions taking place in the field or on location as well as for situations where use of such drives provide greater stability and safety amidst harsh working conditions. Durability is enhanced through a chassis created with a shock absorption design whose resiliency is aided through dampers able to absorb impact that could affect the disks, making the enclosure shock and vibration resistant as high as MIL50G/11ms in non-operating mode.
Both units feature USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt 2 connectivity, with the 4 terabyte PSZ-RA4T containing two 2 TB drives and the 6 terabyte PSZ-RA6T featuring two 3 TB drives. They can be configured in hardware-controlled RAID-0, RAID-1 and JBOD modes. Sony claims data transfers rates reaching a maximum of 440 MB/sec — 110 MB/sec for transfer of RAW 4K video. The RAIDs will function with Sony Memory Media Utility software and so will be able to display such hardware-based information as capacity, free space, formatting, and disk status.
Also now available is the SxS Pro+, a 256GB memory card aimed at the 4K video market that provides around 40 minutes of moderately compressed 4K video recording.
Bill Cubellis, Director of Professional and Storage Media Sales & Marketing for Sony Electronics points to the fact that the demand for larger capacity mobile storage options will continue to grow as 4K content becomes more of a video industry standard. “Sony’s entry into RAIDs and higher capacity memory cards offer solutions that meet the needs of today’s content creators, who require a fast, efficient, portable and dependable workflow, and the ability to store all of the action from a day’s shoot in one place,” he says.
The new RAIDs are set to be available in November of this year with pricing to be determined.
