Huge Systems, which provides RAID 3 storage systems to the entertainment industry, has introduced a new RaIDE Cart product that combines the features of disk and tape in a mini-tower desktop form factor.
The Mac compatible RaIDE Cart has four removable cartridges that each hold up to 100GB of standard IDE disk storage. As a result, large amounts of data can easily be stored on-site or moved to another location, according to spokesperson, Sheldon Liebman. What’s more, as higher capacity IDE drives are introduced, even more storage will be available through RaIDE Cart, he added.
“As it is a SCSI U160 device we do recommend that it is used with the ATTO UL3S/D SCSI adaptors,” Rick Balabuck, Huge’s marketing manager, told MacCentral. “The RaIDE Cart looks like a very large SCSI disk. Of course, both the size and performance depends on the number of drive cartridges installed. (100-400GB, and 40-80MB/sec sustained data transfer rates). The beauty of this product is that the user can expand the system capacity as needed and in effect has an affordable and extremely fast disk based backup system.”
The removable cartridge design allows RaIDE Cart to be used in a wide variety of applications. A single cartridge can be used to store and edit DV material. Two cartridges can be used together to handle a multi stream DV application or a single uncompressed SD stream. Using all four together provides enough bandwidth for multiple uncompressed streams of SD material, Liebman said.
In addition to “online” storage, RaIDE Cart is also a handy backup device. Advances in IDE disk drive technology have made it possible to configure disk-based backup systems that actually cost less than traditional tape-based alternatives, according to Mike Anderson, chief designer of the RaIDE Cart products. A 100GB IDE drive sells for approximately US$230, or $2.30 per GB. A 20GB DLT tape cartridge costs about $60, or $3 per GB.
RaIDE Cart also outperforms traditional tape backup solutions, Anderson said. A single cartridge can back up data at over 40MB per second and four cartridges can back up data at over 80MB per second. Best of all, disk-based backup is uncompressed and doesn’t require a lengthy “restore” operation to gain access to the data, Anderson said.
As a standard SCSI device, RaIDE Cart connects to any computer using a SCSI LVD U160 cable and is compatible with all major host bus adapters. RaIDE Cart will be available next month with prices starting at under $1,400.