More competition in the OC hard-drive space starts today as San Mateo’s Fabrik Inc. launches a professional line of hard drives.
Fabrik, which bought the consumer storage division of Santa Ana’s SimpleTech in February, says that operations of the pro line are also based in Orange County.
The new SimpleTech Pro Drives are serious pieces of hardware — terabyte storage with gigabit connections and a sleek industrial design made for stacking drives on top of one another.
Two styles are available, the Pro Drive with one hard drive and the Duo Pro Drive with two hard drives. A third option, the Simple Drive, offers the new design but not the higher-end features.
“From feedback from prosumers and SMB (small-to-medium business) teams, what our customers said they wanted was something more professional,” said Matt McRae, Fabrik’s vice president of marketing.
Fabrik launched two years ago as a consumer-service web site where users could share and store photos, music and other files online. But with founders hailing from hard-drive maker Maxtor, now part of Seagate Technologies, Fabrik expanded into hardware in February when it acquired the consumer storage division of Santa Ana’s SimpleTech.
The bulk of Fabrik’s employees – 140 out of 160 companywide – work in Orange County. The new Pro line is headed up in Santa Ana as well.
While the new drives have USB 2.0 ports to transfer data between drive and computer, Fabrik added eSATA II, an even faster connection topping 3-gigabits per second.
In real-world tests, however, Fabrik said eSATA’s speeds are more like 445 to 856 megabits per second due to hardware limitations. Fabrik said the number is conservative and reflects how quickly data was written to the drive, as opposed to reading. (Click image below for larger version.)
The faster speed was achieved in the Duo Pro Drive, which has two hard drives. With RAID 0 technology, data can be written to both drives at the same time, thereby doubling the speed. But if one drive is used to back up the second drive, as is the case in a RAID 1 configuration, speeds are halved.
Fabrik also added what it calls a smart fan. It’s based on temperature of the drive and turns on when the drive reaches a certain temperature. In order to avoid overheating while the drives are stacked, Fabrik added vents to the top and bottom that draw in cool air. Hot air is pushed out the back.
“A lot of thermal design went into this,” McRae said.
Fabrik will also offer an encrypted online-storage service, with the first 2 GBs free. For unlimited online storage, the charge is $4.95 a month. The service will be available to all consumers.
While the hard drives are compatible with PCs and Macs, Fabrik is working on a Mac-friendly software service, expected to launch in the first quarter next year.
Drives are available now at various retailers. Prices as follows:
Simple Drive: Includes USB 2.0 connection, standard lock slot and new industrial design for stacking.
- 250 GB, $100
- 320 GB, $130
- 500 GB, $170
Pro Drive: Includes USB 2.0 and eSATA II connection, smart-fan technology, security lock slot and stackable design.
- 500 GB, $230
- 750 GB, $330
- 1 TB, $530
Duo Pro Drive: All the features of the Pro Drive but can fit two hard drives in one case for RAID 0 and RAID 1 technology.
- 1 TB, $400
- 1.5 TB, $600
- 2 TB, $800
Tamara 'the Gadgetress' Chuang
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