A-Data Launches New SSD RAID Enclosure

With A-Data's SSD RAID enclosure, you can switch between the seven supported RAID modes with a simple hardware switch.  Take that, bulky RAID configuration screens!

For those of you sporting two or more solid-state-storage devices (and who isn’t?), A-Data has released a new RAID-themed enclosure that could help you boost your speeds and eliminate that ugly stack of drives that’s sitting inside your PC.  The company’s new XPG Dual SSD 3.5-inch RAID enclosure combines two 2.5-inch SSDs into a single, 3.5-inch form-factor drive cage.  You can run each drive independently from the other, or you can have the enclosure slaps your two drives together in one of seven different RAID modes: JBOD, RAID 0, RAID 1, Span, SAFE33, SAFE50, or GUI.

The neat and/or perilous part of the enclosure is that you can switch between the different raid modes using a switch on the back of the device.  While we hope the device has some kind of foresight to not wipe your data and reinitialize a new RAID should you accidentally choose a new level, A-Data doesn’t mention exactly how the hardware switch works.  You can install the RAID enclosure internally (connected via SATA cables) or you can opt to mount the entire drive box externally and connect using a standard USB cable. 

You’ll have to wait a little bit for A-Data’s device to come to stores.  The company expects the XPG Dual SSD 3.5-inch RAID enclosure to be ready by the end of the first quarter of 2009.  Expect to shell out roughly $30 for a non-RAID version and $60 for an enclosure with RAID functionality.