MicroNet Technology is offering an external Serial ATA (eSATA)-based RAID system aimed at small to medium businesses and home office users in the form of the SR-4 Blackbird. t’s priced starting at $599.
The SR-4 offers four SATA drive bays for a total of up to 4 terabytes (TB) of storage capacity. Weighing about 12 pounds, the SR-4 Blackbird uses eSATA-300 technology, using SATA II-based hard disk drives that support NAtive Command Queuing and up to 16MB of data buffer cache. The SR-4 Blackbird provides up to 240 MB/sec read speed, 200 MB/sec write speed, according to MicroNet.
Compatible with Mac OS X, Windows and Linux, the SR-4 Blackbird includes an eSATA controller card, and is available with either PCI-Express (PCIe) or PCI-X controllers (depending on whether you have a Power Mac or a Mac Pro). It supports RAID Levels 0, 1 and 5, RAID 10 and Just a Bunch of Disks (JBOD) operation.
The 1TB system comes bundled with a two-port card for $599 or four-port card for $699; 2TB two-port for $899, 2TB four-port for $999; or 3TB two-port for $1699, four-port for $1799.