Areca Adds USB 3.0 to 8-Bay Disk Array

Areca Technology Corporation announced to add USB 3.0 connectivity into ARC-5040, an existing 8-bay 3Gbps eSATA, FireWire 800, iSCSI/AoE and USB 2.0 multiple hosts compact RAID subsystem. The ARC-5040 is originally designed to support multiple hosts (with 3.0Gbps eSATA, FireWire 800, iSCSI/AoE and USB2.0) solution for both PC and Mac.

Areca add USB 3.0 for computers running on a USB 3.0-compatible motherboard or with a PCI-E USB 3.0 card. USB 3.0 was designed to co-exist with USB 2.0 instead of replace it. USB 3.0 devices can work with USB 2.0 ports and USB 3.0 ports support USB 2.0 devices, but both at USB 2.0 speeds. The USB 3.0 port delivers in excess of 220 MB per second (MB/sec) sustained RAID 0 reads and over 210 MB/sec RAID 0 sequential writes.

High transfer rates make ARC-5040 well suited for audio/video application especially the rapidly growing demand from the Mac Video Editing markets. The Intelligent cooling continuously adapts to environmental conditions by automatically controlling the speed of the cooling fans. This super silent design, optimizing balance between noise reduction and necessary cooling, help the resellers to offer the cost effective storage solution to the end customers.

The ARC-5040 incorporates onboard high performance 400MHz storage processors and on-board 128MB DDR2-400 SDRAM memory to deliver true hardware RAID. It can be configured to RAID levels 0, 1, 10, 1E, 3, 5, 6, Single Disk or JBOD. The controller unit is the most cost-effective SATA disk drive RAID controller with completely integrated high-performance and data-protection capabilities, which meet the performance and features of a midrange storage product at an entry-level price.