Dynatek Automation Systems Inc, Toronto, Canada, has developed a new disk array product for personal computers, based on RAID-5 technology. IntegRAID has internal, integrated SCSI 1 and 2 slots and supports Fast SCSI drives that can transfer up to 10M-bytes per second on each of their dedicated channels in burst mode, reaching the EISA bus limit of 33M-bytes per second burst transfers. Two SCSI controller options are available Adaptec Inc’s device, which uses a 32-bit processor from Intel Corp, and Distributed Processing Technology Inc’s product, which uses a 32-bit chip set from NCR Corp. Both have parallel data transfers of 20M-bytes per second. The 5.25 form factor drive bay contains three disk drives and fits inside the server. If one of the 1 high 3.5 Toshiba Corp disks goes down, data is automatically written onto the two remaining disks. The user simply ejects the disk from the relevant drive, and replaces it. The 420Mb product is aimed at solicitors, accountants, small workgroups within a large company, or anyone that doesn’t need a tremendous amount of capacity, but cannot afford to have their server go down at any time. Evaluation units for Novell Inc’s NetWare and Santa Cruz Operation Inc Unix servers will begin shipping sometime this quarter, with volume shipment from the first quarter of 1993. A fully-configured 420Mb device will cost UKP5,100. A 2Gb version will follow sometime in the New Year for use with IBM Corp’s OS/2 and PS/2 machines.
