Bravish PC RAID

The Bravish PC RAID (Redundant Array of Independent (or Inexpensive) Disks)

is meant to increase data reliability for high-end desktops and low-end servers.

It fits into a standard tower cabinet that has at least two free 5.25"

bays. It’s made up of a case containing three lockable drawers, one for the

controller card and the other two for hot swappable hard disks. Behind the case

is a slot to connect it to the IDE bus. Once connected, the computer will see

this as a single hard disk.

The controller card inside mirrors both hard disks in real time. This is

called RAID level 1 or ‘Mirroring’, which delivers improved fault tolerance

at the expense of available capacity in the drives. For instance, if you use two

20 GB hard drives, then their total capacity sums up to 40 GB. Due to mirroring,

however, only 20 GB is actually used. If one hard disk crashes, the other one

takes over, so your work doesn’t get affected. When a hard drive crashes, an

LED starts to blink with an audible alarm.

When you plug in a new hard disk, the card will automatically copy data to it

from the working drive. You don’t have to format or partition the new hard

disk before inserting it. You can even use the system while the rebuild is

happening, and the system’s performance doesn’t go down.

This system, however, doesn’t protect your data from accidental deletion by

a user or a virus attack. Its installation is plug-n-play and requires no

software. Any 3.5" IDE hard disks can be fitted inside, but it’s highly

recommended to use hard drives of the same capacity. If the sizes are different,

then the lower capacity will be mirrored, and the extra capacity of the other

drive will be wasted. The product is OS-independent and costs Rs 14,950 without

the hard drives.

Source: Mediaman Infotech, Mumbai. E-mail: mediaman@bom3.vsnl.net.in

Website: www.bravish.com  Tel:

22-3823100/200/300 Fax: 3477418.

Sandeep Saxena in Mumbai