Product Reviews

You can never have too much storage space, particularly if you work with digital media files. But how do you choose between the vast array of different hard drive products available?

Miglia takes an unusual approach to the problem by focusing on the drive enclosures rather than the drives themselves. There's little to distinguish between hard drive mechanisms, but the features available in the enclosure can make all the difference.

The MediaBank MT-R and the MediaBank HS-R both focus on a specific sector of the storage market - Redundant Array of Independent Drives (RAID) solutions. RAID devices use more than one hard drive, and there are various different types of RAID that can be used for different purposes. The two most common are RAID 0 (also known as striping) and RAID 1 (also known as mirroring).

The MediaBank MT-R can be used for both striping and mirroring. Striping combines multiple drives so the computer treats them as a single drive, but with the combined capacity of all the drives in the array. Individual blocks of data are written to alternate mechanisms. The benefit of RAID striping is improved read/write speed.

Mirroring writes all data identically to each drive in the array, so you have an immediate backup of everything you write to the disk. The MT-R is supplied with CharisMac RAID software for setting up both types of array, although you can do the same with Disk Utility in OS X, which we found easier to use.

Space saver

The MT-R houses two drive mechanisms, yet it's not much bigger than a standard desktop drive enclosure. You can either buy an empty enclosure and fit your own hard drives, using the very easy-to-follow instructions or, if you don't happen to have two spare drive mechanisms sitting around the office, then Miglia can also supply it with a selection of different-sized drives pre-installed. For example, you can get an MT-R with two 120Gb 7200rpm drives for just over £200 more than the empty case, around the same as if you bought two internal drives independently.

The enclosure itself is constructed of solid aluminium, with sleek lines and curves. There are four FireWire ports, two for each drive. Each drive is also connected to a separate FireWire controller to ensure maximum performance and security. The downside to this is that you'll need two spare FireWire ports on your Mac. The two additional ports on the MT-R enable you to daisychain additional devices on each of the two FireWire channels.

If you're intending to use the drives in mirrored mode, then you can connect them both to your built-in FireWire ports. But for a striped array, Miglia recommends each drive be connected to independent FireWire buses on your Mac, so you'll need to install

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a FireWire PCI card. This way, you get the maximum data throughput to each drive, so maximising the potential of the array.

In our speed tests, we found the striped array was faster using separate FireWire buses, but only by a factor of about 10%, so it's questionable whether the benefit is great enough to justify the expense.

Of course there's nothing to stop you from just using the two separate drives individually, and just benefiting from the fact that the MT-R takes up much less space than two separate drive enclosures, and only requires one power supply.

We were impressed by the MediaBank MT-R's versatility, although we weren't convinced of the practicality of having a mirrored RAID array where the two drives are housed in a single enclosure. You get the data redundancy with RAID 1, but the drives can't be separated, so are equally at risk from physical damage or electrical problems.

Dawn RAIDIf a mirrored RAID array is what you want, then the MediaBank HS-R is the product for you. This dedicated RAID 1 system shares the MT-R's styling, although it's significantly bigger. This is because its two drive mechanisms are contained in individual housings, which can easily be removed from the front of the unit. The drive housings are accessed via a lockable door on the front of the enclosure.Despite the lock, we were a little disappointed by the flimsy, plastic construction of this door and its hinge. Similarly, the handles and locking mechanisms on the drive housings seem a little cheap and lack the robust build quality that we had anticipated. Another plus point is that, unlike the MT-R, the HS-R doesn't require any software. Instead, all of the RAID setup is handled by a dedicated controller in the enclosure. The status of the RAID array is indicated on the LCD panel on the front of the device. There's only a single FireWire bus for connection to a Mac (plus a spare port for daisychaining), and as far as your Mac is concerned, only a single drive is connected. Everything you copy to the HS-R is automatically copied to both drives.

The big advantage of this design is that either drive can be removed and stored separately to ensure maximum security. When the drive is reinserted, the HS-R automatically rebuilds the array, copying all data from the drive that was already in the enclosure to the replaced drive. The only problem with this is that this rebuild mechanism kicks in regardless of whether the drive has been updated or not, and it can take an hour or two to finish, depending on the capacity of the drives. However, this activity occurs in the background so you can still use the drive in the meantime. Another advantage of this approach is you can use multiple drives and rotate between them for even greater data security. The HS-R is supplied with a spare drive housing for this purpose, or you can buy a system preconfigured with three drives.

RAID systems are generally used when high speed or data security are imperative and as a result the drives usually cost a small fortune. These products from Miglia bring the advantages of RAID technology within reach of everyone, both in terms of cost and ease of use.

If you're after fast external storage for audio or video work, go for the MediaBank MT-R, but if data security is your main concern, the HS-R fits the bill.