8-bay RAID solution

CalDigit has begun shipping the HDPro Tower and Rack Mount 8-bay RAID storage solution. The bay supports RAID 0,1,5 and 6 and can attain data transfer rates of 400MB/s in RAID 5. It can handle capacities from 2.0TB up to 8.0TB, and uses PCI Express direct attach as a storage interface that connects the host and RAID controller at up to 20Gbps, eliminating the need for an additional host adapter. Prices start at $4000 for a 2TB system which includes a CalDigit Controller Card. CalDigit officials said "Unlike Fibre Channel, SCSI, FireWire and eSATA RAID storage, the CalDigit HDPro is using a direct connection to the computers bridge chip and memory system combined with high link speeds. This direct link eliminates latency introduced by the conversion of other interfaces and provides superior bandwidth, availability and deployment flexibility over earlier-generation SCSI and Fibre Channel technology."

While in RAID 5 mode, the HDPro uses distributed parity algorithm, accessing data and parity blocks across all the drives in the disk array, this removes the limitation that the dedicated parity drive represents in RAID 3, improving write and read performance in RAID 5. The setup can also rebuild itself in the event of one drive failing; when configured in RAID 6 mode, fault tolerance is maintained by the CalDigit RAID engine ensuring that the parity information for any given block of data is placed on two drives separate from those used to store the data itself, protecting data even if two drives fail.

The CalDigit ExpressCard plugs your HDPro into your MacBook Pro, or PC laptop, and enables you to edit DVCProHD, DVCAM, HDV, uncompressed SD and up to 10 bit uncompressed HD.

by MacNN Staff