LAS VEGAS—April 21, 2008—Sonnet Technologies, a leader in providing local storage systems for professional users of Macintosh®, Windows®, and UNIX® systems in the film, video, and broadcast industries, today announced that the Fusion F2 portable RAID storage system is the recipient of the prestigious 2008 Black Diamond Award, presented by the editorial staff of DV magazine at the 2008 NAB Show.

The DV Black Diamond Award honors new (or impressively updated) products that make their U.S. debut at NAB. Named for the “five-diamond” rating system used in DV magazine product reviews, the Black Diamond Awards are presented to outstanding developers and manufacturers that have helped advance the technological art of production and post.

“The Fusion F2 portable 2-drive RAID SATA storage system offers uncompromising performance and reliability in a compact, durable, low-power package constructed specifically for portable use,” said Robert Farnsworth, CEO of Sonnet Technologies. “The response from early Fusion F2 users has been phenomenal, and we’re pleased that the industry experts at DV magazine also have acknowledged the system’s technological innovation—a unique combination of portability, speed, and capacity—with this prestigious award.”

The Fusion F2 portable RAID storage system provides speed, reliability, ruggedness, and convenience for on-location video capture or remote use when grid power is unavailable. Fusion F2 features 640GB of storage using two 2.5-inch drives mounted side by side in a rugged enclosure, ensuring fast and secure storage in a low-profile design measuring just 5.9 by 6.2 by 0.72 inches. The unit slides easily into a case for transport and, because it is powered from a FireWire® port, can be used in virtually any setting. The diminutive Fusion F2 delivers remarkable performance with data transfer rates up to twice as fast as a pair of FireWire 800 drives.

Sonnet’s Fusion F2 features two eSATA data connections and is designed for use with the Sonnet Tempo™ SATA ExpressCard/34 adapter for the MacBook® Pro and Windows notebooks. By connecting via SATA interface, Fusion F2 handily supports portable video capture in conjunction with an AJA® Video Systems’ ioHD, which requires dedicated use of FireWire bandwidth.

To protect priceless field footage, the Fusion F2’s drives can be configured in RAID 1 mirrored mode, and still can capture Apple® ProRes HQ HD fed from an AJA ioHD. This protected mode also allows safe field transfer of Panasonic® P2 or similar memory cards. Footage verification by a MacBook Pro/Fusion F2 system gives users the peace of mind in erasing and reusing cards on location. With its drives configured as a RAID 0 striped volume, Fusion F2 is capable of 126 MB/sec read and write data transfers (compared with 66 MB/sec connecting via FireWire 800), thus allowing users to capture and play more streams of compressed video for portable video editing.

Fusion F2’s drives are individually shock-isolated, protecting them during transport and virtually eliminating cross-coupled vibration during operation that, if unchecked, can induce soft errors, a potential source of skipped frames. Fusion F2 is cool, quiet, and energy-efficient: Side-by-side placement of its drives increases the metal case's cooling surface area, thereby eliminating the need for a fan.