Sans Digital debuts three new PCI RAID cards

Sans Digital has announced three PCI RAID cards that feature a new set of Silicon-Image-based host bus adapters with selectable RAID and BASE BIOS jumpers. The new series includes three different models. A 2-port eSATA PCIe 1x card, a 4-port eSATA PCI-X card and single-port Infiniband SFF-8470 PCI-X card. They are available now via the Sans Digital website, with the 4-port eSATA card retailing for $110 and the Infiniband card retailing at $120 (the 2-port eSATA card's price was unavailable at press time). The cards work with machines running Mac OS X 10.4 or later.

The RAID cards process RAID information on the adapter’s chipset, preventing the CPU from being taxed by the disk operations. The cards' RAID BIOS allows the creation of RAID 0, 1, 1+0, and 5, offering options for performance, redundancy or both. All three cards support port multiplying, allowing the connection of up to five hard drives per cable. The port multiplier feature allows each adapter to connect to either 10 (the 2-port card) or 20 hard drives simultaneously.

The selectable RAID/BASE jumper feature allows users to switch RAID and BASE BIOS using a jumper, enabling users to determine the BIOS prior to installing the adapter, without the need to change the BIOS firmware using software utilities, which are not available on the Mac platform.