First seen at CES 2013 exhibition, Asus ROG RAIDR solid-state drives are on their final stage of development before an official release in May. Unlike the majority of contemporary SSD solutions in the market, the product from Asus features quite distinct form-factor, similar to expansion cards. The new drive is known to employ PCI Express 2.0 x2 interface with the support of x16/x8/x4 slots.



According to the preliminary data, ROG RAIDR solid-state drives will be available in two capacity variations – 120 GB and 240 GB. Both models will run under a couple of SandForce SF2281 controllers, comprised into RAID 0 array. MLC NAND flash-memory chips from Toshiba (designed under 19 nm technological process) will be the heart of revolutionary SSDs. Irrespective of the overall differentiation, ROG RAIDR will support a range of technologies traditional SSDs support, including S.M.A.R.T., TRIM and NCQ.


With the respect to the performance, both drives will be able to demonstrate …

Everlasting practice proves that people are more inclined to buy products designed by well-known, established companies, and treat with certain mistrust towards start-up manufacturers. However, 'new' does not mean 'of poor quality'. Infotrend got little attention from the part of customers, but it still manages to produce high-quality and high-performance storage systems. Its latest development, network storage EonNAS Pro 500, deserves special attentions due to competitive facilities and attractive price.



Design Peculiarities


Network storage EonNAS Pro 500 is intended for the installation of five drives. This implies about the product's dimensions which equal to 17.5x24.5x22 cm without the cables. This model is distinguished by simple and strict design, as well as, a solid casing. The frontal panel is made of black dull plastic; the larger part of it is alloted for the drive bay which is covered by a lid. Each of the drive disk features a couple of activity indicators. The …

Adaptec by PMC introduces the first in the market RAID controller series with the outstanding amount of SAS/SATA 6 Gb/sec ports. Adaptec Series 7 combines low-profile expansion cards developed particularly for PCI Express 3.0 bus. The integrated properties are called to enhance the bandwidth of the bus due to the availability of sixteen SAS/SATA 6 Gb/sec ports.



According to the claimed specifications, these RAID controllers are capable to demonstrate up to 450000 IOPS performance (on random writing (4 KB) conditions) when the number of connected SSDs equals to 16. Such performance showings are currently insuperable by a number of contemporary RAID controllers.


Adaptec Series 7 includes eight models which are differentiated by an amount of external and internal ports. All the models are low-profile expansion cards which are equipped with up to 24 ports. Such technological innovation became possible thanks to the implementation of compact HD mini-SAS sockets and …