Adaptec Introduces Serial ATA RAID Controllers

As mounting evidence that serial technologies are gaining momentum over
their parallel brethren in the storage industry, Adaptec Monday
launched a Serial ATA (SATA) product family that features motherboard
solutions and RAID cards to connect PCs and servers
to storage devices.

Short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, RAID is a category of disk
drives, in which Milpitas, Calif.’s Adaptec happens to be a leader, that
employ two or more drives in combination for fault tolerance and
performance.

Adaptec, according to Carvilla Dossett, RAID Product Marketing Manager,
Storage Solutions Group, Adaptec, is working with major disk drive makers,
resellers and original equipment manufacturers to drive Serial ATA adoption.

Serial ATA is quickly becoming a preferred method of
device-to-device connections over Parallel ATA , which
often involves a number of thick, bulky lines. This, IT folks are saying, is
too messy for constrained environments, which is part of the reason why
businesses and vendors are eschewing Parallel ATA for its Serial ATA cousin.

Dossett told internetnews.com Adaptec’s new SATA product family, per
customer demand, enable the use of longer, thinner cables and smaller
connectors than parallel technology to improve chassis airflow and cooling,
simplify cable routing and allow system builders to design smaller form
factors.

Adaptec Serial ATA RAID 1210SA is a 2-port card that brings RAID and up to
1.5 Gigabit-per-second performance to home PCs, workstations and smaller
servers. The 1210SA features Adaptec’s mirroring and striping technology,
HostRAID, which boosts performance of bandwidth-intensive applications such
as video and audio streaming, while its mirroring capability provides disk
backup to protect personal data.

Adaptec’s Serial ATA RAID controllers feature browser-based management
software, which allows end users to monitor and configure RAID subsystems
through the Web.

Adaptec also introduced SATAConnect, a 2-port controller with transfer
speeds of up to 1.5 Gigabits per second for desktop PCs for consumers.
SATAConnect serves as a connection to hard drives to enhance access to
bandwidth-heavy applications, such as video, audio, and games.

The low per-megabyte cost of SATA drives makes them cost-effective for
servers and workstations as well as disk-based backup applications.

The Adaptec Serial ATA RAID 1210SA will begin shipping to resellers and
major distributors later this month at $75 a piece. Adaptec SATAConnect
will be available on May 1 at retail stores CompUSA and MicroCenter for
$49.99.