Remarkable Performance, Diminutive Package
Speed, reliability, ruggedness and convenience are the essential qualities of a storage system for on location video capture. When you need to travel light, choose a Sonnet Fusion™ F2 portable SATA RAID storage system. Providing 640GB of storage in a small enclosure, Fusion F2 uses eSATA connections to deliver the fastest performance yet from a 2-drive portable storage system, with data transfer rates up to twice as fast as FireWire®. By connecting Fusion F2 through a SATA host adapter like Sonnet’s Tempo SATA ExpressCard/34, your notebook’s FireWire 800 port is left open for use by an AJA® Video Systems Io HD, which requires dedicated use of FireWire bandwidth. 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, and allowing it to be bus powered so it can be used even when no grid power is available.

RAID to Go
Connected to a Sonnet Tempo SATA ExpressCard/34 installed in a MacBook® Pro and with its drives configured as a RAID 0 striped volume, the compact Fusion F2 is capable of 126 MB/sec sustained read and write data transfers, fast enough to handle multiple streams of ProRes 422 (HQ)! Compared to the slower 66 MB/sec performance from a pair of drives connected via FireWire 800, the advantage is clear, Fusion F2 provides you the capability to capture and play more streams of compressed video for field editing. With its drives configured as a RAID 1 mirrored volume, Fusion F2 still can capture Apple ProRes 422 (HQ) HD fed from an AJA Io HD. This protected mode also enables you to safely transfer data from Panasonic® P2, Sony® SxS Pro, or similar memory cards in the field. Verifying captured footage on a MacBook Pro/Fusion F2 system will provide you the peace of mind to erase and reuse cards on location.

Three Connections
Fusion F2 features two 3 Gb/sec eSATA data ports. By connecting via a direct SATA II interface with no bridge chip between the F2’s case and SATA II drives, there is no resulting communication slowdown, just the fastest data transfers possible. Fusion F2 uses a novel method to power itself; it draws power from your notebook’s FireWire 400 port. Instead of relying on a bulky external power supply that may not work everywhere you go, Fusion F2 uses an included FireWire to power cable. Whether your notebook is plugged in or running off its battery, Fusion F2 operates anywhere your computer does. Another FireWire device, or a powered hub can also power Fusion F2, if necessary.

Driving Force
Fusion F2 employs two 320GB, 5,400 RPM, 2.5" mobile hard drives that offer an optimal balance between speed, power consumption, and reliability. Sonnet chose these high performance drives because they offer greater area density than other mobile hard drives (pack more data per platter), use the 3 Gb/sec SATA interface and deliver better performance than the 7,200 RPM drives we tested; simply put, they are the fastest 2.5" mobile hard drives available today. Fusion F2’s drives are also extremely quiet and very rugged, making the Fusion F2 a great travel companion for your mobile studio.

Rugged for a Reason
Fusion F2 was devised as a high-performance, high-reliability alternative to existing portable drive solutions. Encased inside a thick aluminum shell, each of Fusion F2’s drives is individually shock isolated, not only protecting the drives during transport, but also virtually eliminating cross coupled vibration during operation, which, unchecked, can induce soft errors, a potential source of skipped video frames.

Versatile Performance
Fusion F2 is ideal for use on location as well as the office various operating systems, editing applications and output demands requiring the flexibility and interoperability that Fusion F2 provides. Fusion storage systems support Mac OS® X, Windows® Vista, Windows XP Professional, and Linux. It is compatible with capture cards from AJA, Blackmagic Design, Matrox and Bluefish444 and works with all mainstream video editing applications including Grass Valley EDIUS, Apple® Final Cut Pro®, and Adobe® Premiere® Pro CS4.