NitroAV offers four-port eSATA PCIe adapter

NitroAV on Friday announced its 4-Port SATAStar Plus, a $129.95 PCI Express (PCIe) expansion card. the card is now available from the Web site.

The host adapter card provides for external Serial ATA (eSATA) ports, and it works in late-model Power Mac G5 and Mac Pro systems, along with Windows and Linux systems.

The card is designed to act as an interface for eSATA-equipped storage devices. eSATA is catching the attention of digital video editors and others who need to capture and transfer data at very high rates of speed — faster, even, that FireWire 800 can manage. This card supports 10-bit uncompressed HD, 8-bit uncompressed HD, DV, HDV, DVPRO HD, 8-bit and 10-bit video workflows, according to NitroAV.

NitroAV has clocked the card as transferring data at up to 295 Mb/s read and 301 Mb/s write, sustained, using four drives configured in a striped array. The card supports multiple RAID levels and also works with port multipliers.