Lacie announces 5 TB SATA RAID

Lacie is offering a 5-disk RAID with a capacity of 5 TB (5 x 1 TB). The "S2S" uses a 3 Gb/s SATA interface and is promised to achieve burst data transfer rates of more than 200 MB/s. Lacie said that up to four S2S boxes can be connected via an included eSATA PCI-X/Express Card to scale the maximum capacity to 20 TB and burst rates to 600 MB/s.

Using a fast mode configuration (RAID 0), the eSATA interface provides "enough speed to edit hours of 10-bit HD uncompressed or play back up to six 8-bit SD video streams," Lacie said. The device can also be configured in safe modes (RAID 1), safe + fast, (RAID 0+1) ; purse capacity or JBOD.

The 5 TB S2S is available for $3699 with a PCI-X card or $3799 with a PCI-E card.