INTRODUCTION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   Although casual users, gamers and enthusiasts have always been our primary focus group I’ve also done my best to secure and test several devices targeted towards professionals and enterprise users in general during the past years. We all know that in many occasions’ professionals and enthusiasts are after the same high end performance parts but professionals and enterprise users alike also seek extra protection for their sensitive data and that's mainly as to why they belong in an entirely different focus group. Now two days ago we tested a dual bay 3.5" USB 3.0 RAID 0/1 enclosure by Akitio but what about people who want fast performance and reliability in a far smaller package? Well RAIDON may just have the answer with their latest Hybrid Runner iH2420-2S-S2 2.5" SSD/HDD combo device.

 

   RAIDON Technology Inc. founded in year 2000, also a brand name “RAIDON” has established to be known for quality and reliable Professional Storage Solutions. RAIDON products has been distributed in high standard of manufacturing quality with unique product designs, providing reliable data storage products exceeding expectations for the image of RAIDON brand. Initial target of RAIDON was devote to professional storage for SME, and gradually RAIDON has foreseen the demands of SOHO, further began design large storage capacity devices with consideration of mobility to convenient each individuals to carry or interchange large data from various purposes, also allowing users may agilely perform data classification with multiple drives. By keeping data protection as a basic concept, device quality and data security leads in parallel from RAIDON R&D team development directions, and it is the core value of RAIDON brand ensuring the security exists for customer information. RAIDON continuously reveals dedication throughout years designing and developing storage solutions to facilities, SME, SOHO and consumers for keeping the existence of their precious data assets. While upholding our dedication and together with the ability to development for bringing the most practical and complete solutions to various demands, RAIDON expects becoming a second to none of professional small-scale data storage solution provider who can truly consolidate reputation to each of the distributors.

 

   When i first read about the Hybrid Runner iH2420-2S-S2 i thought it was just another 2.5" SSD/HDD hybrid/cache performance focused solution and so i expected to mount both the HDD and the SSD, store everything on the HDD and wait for the SSD to start caching the most used data. But no, the Hybrid Runner iH2420-2S-S2 basically mimics most of the functionality found in RAID 1 and so it uses the SSD to store your data directly and then backs up that data (user specified intervals) to the secondary HDD for safekeeping. However that's not all so if the capacity of the HDD is a lot larger than the SSD you can use the extra space to store data (for example if the SSD is 120GB and the HDD is 750GB then you will have a primary 120GB partition and a secondary 630GB partition). The Hybrid Runner iH2420-2S-S2 by RAIDON practically guarantees the safe keeping of your sensitive data onto the secondary HDD so the only thing left is to see just how well it performs.

 

 

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PACKAGING AND CONTENTS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The device gets shipped inside a small box with a large product picture at the front.

 

 

A basic explanation of what the Hybrid Runner does is placed at the top of the box.

 

 

Over at the right side we see a picture of the unit’s rear.

 

 

The serial number, barcode and device color are placed at the left side.

 

 

At the bottom of the box RAIDON explains the backup scheduling feature.

 

 

The Hybrid Runner is safely placed inside a small plastic bag and between two foam spacers.

 

 

The box contains the Hybrid Runner iH2420-2S-S2 device, plastic bag with 4 mounting screws, user’s manual and a software CD.

 

 

 

THE HYBRID RUNNER IH24-2S-S2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Hybrid Runner is the same exact size as a 3.5" HDD or a 1.44" floppy drive (chances are you will be mounting it in the 1.44" floppy area).

 

 

Unlike most floppy drives however the Hybrid Runner has 5 mounting holes on each side.

 

 

The front fascia is black in color and only has the drive covers and the activity LEDs (to open one of the covers you just need to press it).

 

 

A large sticker with information such as correct drive placement and activity LED troubleshooting is placed at the top of the device.

 

 

Aside the SATA II and power connectors at the rear we also see several exhaust holes and the hybrid/clear switch.

 

 

In order to remove the drives you need to open the covers, extend them all the way to the right (as seen above) and press inwards until the drives come out.

 

 

 

HYBRID MANAGEMENT PROGRAM

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RAIDON also bundles their Hybrid Management Program (Hybrid GUI) through which you can monitor the current real-time sync percentage completion, format the drivers, setup backup intervals, update the firmware and set various email notifications (for example if one of the drives fails).

 

 

 

TEST BED

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TESTING METHODOLOGY

 

   For this review (and similar ones) we will perform our standard testing procedure used with both 2.5" and 3.5" drives. However since we are talking about an dual bay 2.5" hybrid solution this time over we will be using one Kingston HyperX 120GB SATA III SSD and one Western Digital Scorpio Black 160GB HDD. So once again we will be using our standard selection of benchmark suites such as the famous HD Tach RW (Long Bench 32mb Zones), HD Tune Pro (read/write -when possible- speeds), Sisoftware Sandra Pro (Read/Write -also when possible- speeds), AIDA64 (Linear Read/Random Read), Crystal Disk Mark x64 (100MB/1000MB read/write speeds) and finally the quite outdated yet highly reliable ATTO 2.46 (Max Read/Max Write speeds). Every test was repeated for a total of 6 times and after that the average (not peak) performance numbers were recorded into our charts. As always every test was performed in a fresh installation of Microsoft Windows 7 Service Pack 1 with every update installed up to August 8th 2012.

 

 

TEST RESULTS - AIDA 64 / ATTO

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TEST RESULTS - HD TACH RW / HD TUNE PRO

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TEST RESULTS - SISOFTWARE SANDRA PRO / CRYSTAL DISK MARK X64

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CONCLUSION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   Since the Hybrid Runner iH2420-2S-S2 is using two 2.5" drives i decided to compare it against other 2.5" HDDs and hybrid solutions, however if you want to see how it does against 3.5" drives and SSDs feel free to do a search for our latest HDD/SSD reviews and check the recorded results. Overall the entire concept by RAIDON is very attractive and quite innovative (since it's not exactly the same as RAID 1) so it should appeal to professionals who are mostly after data protection. However when it comes to performance it's not what i was expecting and that's also the only flaw i can find with the Hybrid Runner. You see for some weird reason our friends over at RAIDON decided to equip the Hybrid Runner with SATA II connectivity so even if you use one of the latest SATA III SSDs like the HyperX by Kingston you can't hope to ever reach speeds over 300MB/s. Still after completing all tests i was surprised to see that although it performed quite well in all read tests (up to 240MB/s) the same was not the case for write tests (up to 76MB/s) and although this may get improved with a firmware update right now it doesn't look very promising.

 

   The Hybrid Runner iH2420-2S-S2 by RAIDON is currently available in the EU for a price tag of around 85Euros a price tag which may not be much for people who seek automated data protection/backup above all else but for people who are after raw performance and/or a combination of both I’m afraid that RAIDON needs to put some effort in improving the unit first by upgrading it to SATA III (so it can go over 300MB/s) and then by tweaking its firmware (since the low write speeds seem to be because of that). Once again the concept behind the Hybrid Runner iH2420-2S-S2 was very well thought and innovative but the execution could be a lot better and that's why we can only award it with our Golden Award.

 

PROS

- Build Quality
- Innovative
- Automatic Data Backup (User Defined Intervals)
- RAID 1 Benefits
- Size (3.5")
- Price (For Some)

 

 

CONS

- Performance