5 Reasons You Need VIA Serial RAID Technology In Your Next PC - It's RAID Done Right

Serial RAID has gone mainstream with the introduction of the VIA VT8237A South Bridge. Here are five reasons why you should be plugging into the new high performance storage standard that fuses Serial ATA and RAID Technology to create screaming fast HDD transfers with mind numbing ease. It's RAID Done Right from VIA Technologies, Inc.

1. Storage Performance
In today's media rich computing environment, data transfer between the hard disk drive (HDD) and PC are measured in terms of megabytes and even gigabytes, so HDD data speed and efficiently can have a huge impact on system performance, especially when your PC is performing HDD intensive digital content creation applications such as ripping MP3s, editing home videos or even playing 3D games. VIA's DriveStation Advanced Controller Suite fuses ultra-fast 150MB/s Serial ATA data transfer rates with the low latency and high integrity performance benefits of RAID to create a robust powerful enterprise level storage subsystem on mainstream PCs.

2. Ease of Use
In the past, the configuration of a RAID system was very complex, requiring a set up guide as thick as a motherboard user manual to aid in the process. Tricky BIOS configurations are now a thing of the past with the VIA DriveStation Controller Suite and V-RAID software windows interface - which make configuring a RAID setup easy, by simply "hot-plugging" your two Serial ATA HDDs and opening up the V-RAID software and selecting your desired RAID 0, RAID 1 or RAID 0+1 configuration.

3. Data Reliability & Peace of Mind
Ask yourself this question: What would happen if I had a critical hard disk drive failure today? To many people, this scenario is almost the equivalent of having their office or home burn to the ground. The easiest way to avoid this nightmare is to back-up your data. In the past, data back-up involved the configuration of complex networks or the addition of RAID hardware add-in cards. Now, with the integration of a Serial RAID controller directly into the VIA VT8237A South Bridge, anybody can easily setup a RAID 1 configuration, whereby one hard drive is mirrored in full onto another, creating an automatic back-up system. So, if one hard drive in the array fails, no data is lost as a copy is kept on the other hard drive. Now that is peace of mind.

4. Awesome Added Value
With the integration of the VIA DriveStation Controller Suite in the VT8237A, Serial RAID has joined the ranks of mainstream technologies such as USB and Fast Ethernet LAN, and therefore will come equipped as a standard feature on all mainboards incorporating this feature-rich South Bridge. This means you will now receive a highly valued-added specification that just a PC generation ago was considered a high cost enterprise level storage feature.

5. Improved System Aesthetics
Look inside a traditional RAID configured PC chassis and you are likely to see a myriad of thick and ugly flat ribbon cables winding throughout the system, constricting chassis airflow and thus creating undue heat, negatively affecting system stability. Serial RAID does away with this unsightly mess by replacing the ribbon cables with sleek Serial ATA cables that ensure far better air flow and can even impact the design and size of the chassis by allowing smaller, more aesthetic designs. Serial cables just look plain cool, the perfect finishing touch to any proud case modder's project.