Two Big SATA II solution

LaCie today announced it will bundle a next-generation SATA II PCI-Express (PCIe) card 2E with its compact Two Big two-disk RAID system. The new LaCie SATA II 3Gb/s PCI-Express Card 2E has two ports and provides a native x1 host bus interface for use with Apple's Power Mac G5s or PCs with PCIe architecture. The LaCie Two Big with PCIe card bundle is available for the lowered price of $450 (500GB) or $880 (1TB). LaCie also offers a Two Big bundled with a PCI-X card for the lowered price of $470 (500GB) and $900 (1TB), as well as optional spare drive bundles. LaCie's Two Big with PCIe achieves a maximum throughput of 110MB/s in Fast mode (RAID 0). Drives are hot-swappable for instant expandability and the unit is hot-pluggable so can be removed without having to power down the computer. LaCie Two Big is also available with an optional spare hard drive.

LaCie Two Big comes pre-formatted in Fast mode in which the disks are striped together for maximum performance--ideal for real-time video editing. It can also be configured to RAID 1 (called Safe mode) in which data is mirrored for redundancy in case of drive failure. Concatenation (called Big mode) spans data over both disks so full capacity can be achieved whereby the drive appears as one large volume, or alternatively JBOD mode will show each disk as an independent volume.

It features a compact and sturdy metal case as well as a quiet fan for heat dissipation. It is available for pre-order today via LaCie website and will ship through LaCie’s specialized dealer network by the end of June. LaCie Two Big ships with the selected PCI card and all necessary cables.

by MacNN Staff