ACARD Technology Corp., specialists in PCI IDE and SCSI adapters for Power Macs, is showcasing two new products at this week’s MacWorld Conference & Expo in New York City.
One is the AEC-6880M, a PCI Ultra ATA-133 IDE RAID adapter, which has a new function to support RAID 1 (Mirroring mode) for Mac OS 9.x. AEC-6880M RAID 1 automatically backs up data without installing any software. It not only takes the advantage of 133MB/sec bus speed but also provides RAID 0 function which strips data into two parallel disks and offers up to 100 percent performance improvement, according to Daniel Weng, CEO of ACARD.
“ACARD has been providing state-of-art Mac I/O technology for several years,” Weng said. “We are proud to market AEC-6880M, which is designed especially for the DTP and video editing users. It is compatible with PowerMac G3 and G4, and particularly designed for the faster PCI bus.”
Having the true plug and play functionality, there are no software drivers needed to install an Ultra ATA66/100/133 hard drive, he said. With the advanced function, this adapter coexists with the on-board IDE controller. ACARD AEC-6880M with on-board firmware supports a desktop system to boot from any ATA hard drive and supports multitasking to improve the CPU performance. Earlier users of AEC-6880M can download the latest firmware version to update, and enjoy the new function of RAID 1 Mirroring mode.
ACARD is also showcasing their ANS-6000 NAS System, a high performance hardware RAID 1 Network Attached Storage (NAS) server with the advanced auto-detect mechanism of failed disks. It sports native network protocol support, IP and Netmask Setting via Front Panel LCD display, auto-eject of the tray handle when a drive fails, ATA 66/100/133 hard drive with hot swappable support, expandable storage capacity via external Ultra160 SCSI daisy chain, instant re-building of hard drives up to 500MB/minute, and all-in-one SCSI hardware RAID sub-system technology.