Final Thoughts

Proware Technology has a unique product in the miniEPICa Series EP-m501-AA. The 2.5 inch form factor drives really makes the product stand out from the crowd. The external power supply is also a nice touch since it further reduces the overall size of the enclosure. It would have been nice if the EP-m501-AA also included a USB port for fast access on other computers when needed to pull a file or two, but you can't have it all.

The performance of the miniEPICa Series EP-m501-AA is quite good in RAID 0 and RAID 5. A lot of times we see severe penalties when running RAID 5 and the EP-m501-AA only had a slight performance drop. In most cases the small hit would not be noticeable, but the confidence you will have in knowing that your data is secure with redundancy will more than make up the difference.

DAS enclosures are gaining popularity across many user groups. Many prosumers who use Photoshop or Audio / Video editing have already been using DAS enclosures for their easy setup and high speed mass storage. The technology is really trickling down to the consumer market quickly and there are a lot of users that don't need their mass storage to be connected to a network. DAS offers the same redundant data safety features at half the price of NAS servers.

I held onto this review for a few extra weeks hoping to see the Proware Technology miniEPICa Series EP-m501-AA for sale here in the US, but I have yet to see it listed anywhere. The unit is available in Europe, Asia and Australia already. With Proware's new warehouse in California it won't be long before the US market gets Proware products as well.