Mylex Corp is pitching itself directly at its disk controller rival Adaptec Inc, with the launch of RAIDPlus, which puts Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks onto the SCSI host adapter for the same price as a standard SCSI adapter. Mylex is targeting the new product at the professional personal computer user, particularly the audio visual, multimedia author or computer- aided design user, as well as the very low-end Windows NT server user. The company says previous hardware RAID controllers cost around $1,000, and were therefore not viable for the personal computer user. RAIDPlus comes as an enhancement to Mylex ‘s FlashPoint SCSI host bus adapter, and starts at $180 for narrow SCSI. The board will act as an ordinary SCSI host adapter, and therefore can be used at entry level for a single disk drive. When the user wants to upgrade to RAID storage, he simply needs to buy another disk drive. Mylex says RAIDPlus is slightly cheaper than Adaptec’s 2940 SCSI host adapter, but it has RAID capability as well. The company reckons previous pretenders to Adaptec’s business have simply tried to undercut the company on price. RAIDPlus, it claims, has really leapfrogged Adaptec’s technology, as well as being competitive on price. The company claims adding RAID and a second disk drive to a high end personal computer can increase data throughput up to 96%, and by up to 143% by adding two drives. RAIDPlus offers RAID levels 0 – striping, 1 – mirroring, and 0+1 – striping and mirroring, and is shipping now. Current Mylex FlashPoint users can get an upgrade kit for $100.
