If you are seeking a PC or MAC solution for mass storage, absolute data reliability, and speed, then the 3ware Sidecar from AMCC is the answer. Gone are the days of refrigerator sized servers with RAID arrays. Also gone too, are the space concerns and power requirements of raid supported servers.
The 3ware Sidecar is an external RAID desktop solution which expands the storage capacity of PCs, the Apple Mac Pro and Power Mac G5 (PCI Express version). It is essentially a portable desktop storage power house and bottom-less pit for data storage.
It includes a high performance 4-port PCI Express to SATA II Hardware RAID controller, a 4-bay desktop enclosure with chassis control, and a Multi-lane high bandwidth SATA cable. All packaged in a neat desktop chassis. Installation requirements are an available PCI express slot (4x minimum) and of course the physical installation of the PCIx RAID card itself.
This is not your average external hard drive by any means. If you work in the audio video sector, then this is the type of solution your tasks demand. The 3ware sidecar is designed to deliver high speed data throughput for demanding applications such as audio and video editing, or working with large graphics files. Technically, over 200Mb/s in RAID 5 read and write modes. The average spreadsheet user would never fully utilize its true capabilities.
Operating System Support includes Apple Mac G5 OS X (10.4.6 or higher), Mac Pro OS X (version 10.4.8 or higher) Microsoft® Windows® 2003/XP/2000, Red Hat Linux, SuSE Linux, Fedora Linux, 2.4 Linux kernel, 2.6 Linux kernel, FreeBSD; 32/64-bit driver support for Windows, Linux and FreeBSD. If you don’t see your operating system listed, check out: www.3ware.com/support/OS-support.
Features:
- True hardware RAID
- RAID levels 0,1, 5,10 and JBOD
- Exclusive StorSwitch™ high performance architecture
- Up to 3TB capacity*
- 128MB DDR2 533 memory with ECC protection
- Complete configuration management suite
- 3DM® Scout (Mac only), 3ware Disk Manager 2 (3DM®2)
- Command Line Interface (CLI)
- BBU Support
- Hot-swap and hot-spare support for easy maintenance
- Dynamic sector repair for robust data protection
- S.M.A.R.T. disk drive monitoring for reliability
- Front panel LED status indicators
- Online Capacity Expansion and RAID Level Migration
- Drive insertion and removal notification
- RoHS compliant (lead free)
Technical Summary:
SATA II vs. Firewire
SATA II offers significantly faster transfer speeds, better scalability, and improved cabling options than Firewire and USB interfaces. An example of optimal speeds of the various technologies:
SATA II - 3Gb/s
Firewire 800 - 800Mb/s
Firewire 400 - 400Mb/s
USB 2.0 - 480Mb/s
Hardware vs. Software RAID
All AMCC 3ware RAID controllers incorporate on-board processors to deliver true hardware RAID. Software RAID schemes use the system’s processor, exploit host memory, potentially compromise reliability and rob the host system’s valuable CPU cycles just to process RAID calculations.
If you are curious as exactly how much 3 Terabytes is;
| Data Movies(@1Gb each) Digital Photos(@ 5Mb each) Songs(@3Mb each) Spreadsheets(@100k each) |
Quantity 3,000 600,000 1,000,000 30,000,000 |
Additional information:
Service and Support
• 3-year warranty on the 9650SE-4LPME model
• 1-year warranty on the RDE-400-XSATA model
• Support via the web at www.3ware.com/support
• For latest hard drive compatibility listing go to:
www.3ware.com/products/compatibility_sata.asp
Contact information:
Email: mailto:m3waresales@amcc.com
Internet: www.3ware.com
Internet: www.amcc.com
Sales Offices for 3ware Products:
Asia/Pacific: +65-6826-3381
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