14 DAY TRIAL // Though 3.5-inch internal storage units are the most common among consumers, the 2.5-inch form factor is still quite widespread, especially among SSDs, so Patriot decided to offer a 5.25-inch enclosure capable of accommodating up to four of them.
Normally, in order for a 2.5-inch drive to be used properly inside a common enclosure, one requires a special type of bracket.
Patriot, however, decided to set the 2.5-inch drives inside not the 2.5-inch bay, but the 5.25-inch bays that are usually used by optical disk drives or fan controllers.
Basically, the company has developed a pair of so-called drive enclosures that, instead of featuring an external design and the USB interface, are set inside the 5.25-inch drive bay.
Two such drive enclosures have been unveiled, namely the Convoy 425S and Convoy 425XL, both of which have enough room for up to four 2.5-inch SSDs or HDDs.
For those interested in actual specifications, the newcomers are constructed out of aluminum and can support drives with internal capacities of up to 1 TB.
All four said drives are hot-swappable, which means that either one can be removed or replaced without having to shut off the system or the other units.
What's more, the 425XL has support for hardware RAID, which can let the four storage units be set up in multiple RAID options.
The list includes RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 3, RAID 5, RAID 10, as well as JBOD configurations.
Basically, the products should allow any and all end-users to equip their systems with up to four 2.5-inch devices, depending, of course, on how much financial resources they wish to spend on such things.
“What started as a way to promote our expertise with large scale SSD storage PCs, evolved into the Convoy 425 series of enclosures” says Jack Chen Director of Business Development.
“Expanding on the existing Convoy family of two drive enclosures and offering the four drive enclosures provided an improvement on storage density and performance,” he added.
For those interested, the Convoy 425XL has already been spotted as available for order ans shipment, with a price tag of $109.99.