WiebeTech today announced FireWire RAID, which features two high-speed 7200RPM drives in a single aluminum enclosure and offers transfer speeds of up to 60MB/sec. Each drive has a separate FireWire bridge board, allowing completely independent operation as well as striping and mirroring without drivers under OS X. The system includes a PCI FireWire host card, allowing FireWire RAID to connect each independent FireWire bridge through an independent FireWire channel. Pricing is $500 (120GB), $600 (160GB), or $700 (240GB). The drives are expected to ship October 18th. An optional $40 6-port FireWire hub is also available which allows daisy chaining of FireWire RAID.

WiebeTech also announced Super DesktopGB, which features a bus-powered desktop drive in a 3.5-inch enclosure with dual daisy-chainable FireWire ports and a USB 2.0 port. The drive is bundled with MediaFour's MacDrive 5 software, which allows it to mount on Windows computers when the drive is formatted as a Mac volume. (The press release notes that "not all types of computers provide enough FireWire bus power for Super DesktopGB" and it includes an AC adapter as well as FireWire and USB cables, and a vertical stand.) The drives are expected to ship at the end of the month for $150 (case-only), $220 (40GB/5400 rpm), $250 (80GB/7200 rpm), and $300 (120GB/7200 rpm).

by MacNN Staff