NYRO Technix Inc. has released NXRAID v1.2, an update to their RAID Level 5 software solution for Mac OS X.
RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent (or Inexpensive) Disks, is a way to spread data out across multiple hard drives to improve performance, improve reliability, or both.
Mac OS X’s own disk utility software enables users to mirror or stripe data across multiple drives, but NXRAID provides additional functionality: The ability to stripe data at the byte level and stripe error correction information. The result is a combination of performance and fault tolerance.
RAID Level 5 configurations are normally relegated to expensive hardware-based RAID systems, but NXRAID makes such systems available through software alone, when used with the appropriate disk arrays.
The new version of NXRAID, v1.2, corrects an issue specific to four-drive advance configurations, the new slot-loading Xserves and Mac OS X 10.2.5 and 10.2.6.
An original version of NXRAID, v1.1.1, is still available for systems running Mac OS X 10.2.1 through 10.2.4. If you’ve upgraded to 10.2.5 or higher or you’re using a slot-loading Xserve, you’re encouraged to use the new version of NXRAID.