Wichita, Kan.-based storage peripheral maker WiebeTech LLC on Monday announced it’s shipping its new RaidTECH system. The RaidTECH is a plug-and-play, FireWire 800-based hardware RAID system that offers up to 500GB of storage capacity and either Level 0 (striped) or Level 1 (mirrored) RAID support.
RAID is a technology that’s already supported in software by Mac OS X, and has been for some time. But WiebeTech’s RaidTECH system uses a hardware-based controller to free the Mac from having to manage the striping or mirroring of the RAID array.
RAID — an acronym for Redundant Array of Inexpensive (or Independent) Disks — is a common method for spreading out data across multiple drives to either improve performance or reliability. In a striped RAID configuration, data is spread across multiple drive mechanism to improve performance. In a mirrored RAID setup, the same data is written to two or more drives simultaneously; in the event one fails, the other continues to work normally.
The RaidTECH ships with daisy-chainable FireWire 800 and USB 2.0 ports and features hot swappable dual drive bays. A switch allows you to select whether the RaidTECH will configure itself as a striped or mirrored system.
The RaidTECH is available in configurations ranging from a “no drives installed” version for US$599.95 to a dual 250GB drive system for $1,279.95. It’s compatible with Mac OS X or Mac OS 9.1 or higher, as well as various versions of Windows.