Friday, July 10th 2009
PhotoFast Innovates G-Monster Plug-n-Play RAID Adapter
Solid-state drive specialist PhotoFast innovated an easy RAID builder solution, which doesn't boast of being an expansion card, and doesn't require additional drivers from the OS. The G-Monster Evolution "Simple RAID Adapter", is a small orange PCB with SATA II and power input on one side, and two sets of SATA II data and power connections on the other. Users can connect two hard drives or SSDs to the device, and connect the device like any other hard drive, to the computer's storage controller. The RAID array the device builds using the member drives connected to it, remains abstract to the host machine, which sees it as a single hard-drive. The G-Monster Evolution supports RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID JBOD modes, with maximum transfer rates of 270 MB/s for both read and write. RAID modes are configurable with the bundled software. One limitation of this device is that it does not support SSDs that have internal RAID 0 connections between two or more sets of NAND flash memory. This is perhaps because the device uses the same controller, or at least the basic design, that goes into making SSDs with internal RAID connections. Popular SSDs of this type (incompatible with this device) include PhotoFast G-Monster V2, Patriot Warp V3, OCZ Apex, and G.Skill Titan. Its availability and pricing are yet to be known.
Source:
Tweaktown
13 Comments on PhotoFast Innovates G-Monster Plug-n-Play RAID Adapter
Now with this would you to just be able to just plug in in the new mobo without hassle.
The idea is that you get one of PhotoFast's new G-Monster V5 drives and plug this thing in instead of the default RAID 0 card.
You can check out a video here which shows the internals of the V5 www.youtube.com/watch?v=00a21yD4Zow and you'll understand why this is a great addition for those looking at using an SSD for a RAID 1 setup rather than RAID 0.
Of course you won't be seeing the kind of performance numbers that you see in the video if you change the RAID setup from 0 to 1.
The industry needs more of this kind of thinking.
If the price is low enough they'd be great to pair with other RAID controllers, though I expect these to be too expensive compared to existing port multipliers. Then again SATA>IDE adapters are dirt cheap as well, so who knows.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=00a21yD4Zow