14 DAY TRIAL // High Point, a company well known for developing high-performance storage controllers, has just announced the introduction of a new HBA (host bus adapter) that enables users to RAID up to four external USB 3.0 drives.
The add-on card is known as the RocketU 1144AR USB 3.0 and connects to the computer via a second generation PCI Express x4 link, which is capable of providing a total bandwidth of 16Gbps (in each direction).
On the other side, the controller includes four external USB 3.0 ports, each one of these supporting 5Gb/s transfer speeds, that can be connected to a wide series of external storage solutions.
However, unlike other USB 3.0 controllers that are available out there, the RocketU 1144AR also enables the user to setup the connected devices into an external RAID array.
The High Point HBA is compatible with RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 as well as with JBOD (just a bunch of drives) configurations, allowing users to choose between high-speed data access and added reliability.
The attached drives can be administrated via a web-based management interface, which is OS independent, meaning that it can work on various operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, to name just a few.
High Point's RocketU 1144AR is also compatible with USB 1.1, 2.0 and 3.0 hard drives, SSD’s, multi-bay enclosures and docking bays.
According to the company, the 1144AR has already started shipping towards distributors and resellers and should become available soon from online as well as brick and mortar retailer. Pricing wasn't disclosed.
High Point's USB 3.0 adapter range also includes two other such solutions, the dual-port RocketU 1022A and the quad-port RocketU 1144A, but none of these come with RAID support for external volumes.