LaCie unveils SATA II PCIe, RAID bundle

LaCie today announced that it will bundle a SATA II PCI-Express (PCIe) card 2E with its compact Two Big two-disk RAID system. The new LaCie SATA II 3Gb/sec PCI-Express Card 2E offers two ports and provides a native x1 host bus interface for use with Apple Power Mac G5s or PCs with PCIe architecture. The LaCie Two Big with PCIe card bundle is available for $450 with 500GB of storage capacity or $900 with 1TB if storage capacity. LaCie also offers a Two Big bundled with a PCI-X card for $500 with 500GB of storage and $900 for 1TB of storage, as well as optional spare drive bundles.

Two Big with PCIe

LaCie Two Big with PCIe achieves a maximum throughput of 110MB per second in Fast mode (RAID 0). The drives are hot-swappable for instant expandability, and the unit is hot-pluggable enabling users to remove it without having to power down the computer. LaCie's Two Big is also available with an optional spare hard drive.

The RAID system comes pre-formatted in Fast mode, striping disks together for speed out of the box. The solution is configurable to RAID 1 (also known as Safe mode) or to mirror data for redundancy in case of drive failure. Concatenation (also known as Big mode) spans data over both disks allowing full capacity with the drive appearing as one large volume. Alternatively, JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) mode shows each disk as an independent volume.

LaCie Two Big features a compact, sturdy metal case with a quiet fan for heat dissipation, as well as simple reconfiguration with a RAID selection switch. The Two Big includes automatic drive rebuilding support in RAID 1, and works with both Macs and PCs.

Filed under: upgrades/storage