G-Technology said today it has filled a gap in its line of desktop storage solutions with the introduction of the new Thunderbolt 3 G-Speed Shuttle, a transportable device with four drive bays holding hard drives and/or the company’s bay adapters that can be used to dock compatible ev-series drives and card readers.
The G-Speed Shuttle comes in two basic configurations, both with two Thunderbolt 3 ports built in. The four-HDD G-Speed Shuttle, starting at $1,800, can be purchased with between 16 TB and 48 TB of storage and boasts performance of up to 1,000 MB/sec depending on RAID configuration. The two-HDD G-Speed Shuttle with two ev-series bay adapters starts at $2,000 and can be purchased with between 20 TB and 24 TB in its drive bays and reaches a performance target of up to 500 MB/sec. (The hard drives are manufactured by G-Technology parent Western Digital, natch.) The other two bays hold bay adapters allowing direct access to media including Atomos drives, CFast 2.0 cards, and Red Mini-Mags with the use of appropriate G-Technology ev-series readers.
G-Speed Shuttle with Thunderbolt 3 (left) and G-Speed Shuttle with ev Series Bay Adapters.
The G-Speed Shuttle had previously been available in an eight-bay version, dubbed the G-Speed Shuttle XL, and the company realized quickly that it was it was a little too big and bulky for some applications where it would otherwise satisfy various customers’ workflow needs. “The G-Speed Shuttle is getting closer to a sweet size with only four bays,” G-Technology Senior Manager of Product Marketing Matthew Bennion told StudioDaily. “This product is a more reasonable weight — just 16 pounds for the four-drive edition. And with 12 TB drives in each bay, you can have a high-capacity device with fewer drives.”
With Thunderbolt 3 connectivity, the Shuttle can be placed in a chain with other Thunderbolt devices, and is backward compatible with Thunderbolt 2, the company said. For maximum portability, a forthcoming custom Pelican case will hold the four-bay G-Speed Shuttle along with more drives or even a separate G-RAID system.
The Shuttle XL will remain available as a beefier, high-capacity option, but the existing G-Speed Studio is being retired with the arrival of the G-Speed Shuttle. The G-Speed Shuttle is available now in all configurations, the company said. The four-bay version is shipping in 16 TB ($1,800), 24 TB ($2,300), 32 TB ($2,800) and 48 TB ($3,800) versions; the version with two HDDs and two ev-series bay adapters is shipping in 20 TB ($2,000) and 24 TB ($2,300) versions.
