The company will add FireWire 800 drives to this product line within a few weeks. EZQuest also previewed its Thunder Pro A/V RAID FireWire 800 drive and will formally introduce it later this month.
Designed for audio/video professionals, the Thunder Pro A/V FireWire 400 comes in an anodized-aluminum enclosure and is one-third smaller than competitive drives. The Thunder Pro A/V is very quiet because it has no internal fan, and it offers data transfer rates of up to 36MB/sec read and 34MB/sec write. In addition, it features EZ Port, an extra front-access FireWire port that allows fast connect and disconnect, and Smart Switch, which automatically turns the drive on when it is plugged in. The Thunder Pro A/V comes in four configurations: 160GB, 200GB, 250GB and 400GB. All four configurations will be available in late March. EZQuest offers a two-year warranty and 48-hour repair turnaround for all of its Pro A/V products.
Thunder’s key software features include A/V tuning and Disk De-frag. The drive is also optimized for audio-editing programs such as Digidesign Pro Tools; video-editing packages such as Apple’s Final Cut Pro, Avid Express Pro Studio and Adobe’s Premier Pro; and computer-animation programs such as Discreet’s 3ds max 7, Alias’ Maya 6 and Softimage’s xsi 4. The drive has a total of three FireWire ports, and is compatible with Mac OS 9.1 and Mac OS 10.1.5 or later; and Win 98SE, Win 2000, Win ME and Win XP. MSRPs are: $249 for 160GB, $289 for 200GB, $349 for 250GB and $699 for 400GB capacities.
