VST FireRAID is World's Smallest High Performance RAID Array

TOKYO -- VST Technologies, Inc. a leading FireWire and USB developer, announced a 100GB FireWire based RAID Array designed to work with all FireWire equipped Macintosh computers from Apple Computer, Inc.

The VST FireRAID Array includes custom hardware and software that allow multiple FireWire Hard Drives to be used together as a high performance RAID array by providing striping, mirroring and HFS volumes, all simultaneously. Like the VST FireWire Hard Drives, the smallest and most compact in the world, FireRAID is designed to be very small and compact. Measuring approximately 5in Wide x 7in Depth and 9in High, FireRAID is actually portable, and includes built-in Li-Ion battery backup capable of running the array for up to 2 hours in the event of loss of AC power.

Used as an array, multiple drives provide significantly increased bandwidth in the form of Striping (RAID level 0). Striping is a method of streaming data to/from multiple drives simultaneously to achieve higher bandwidth. FireRAID also provides mirroring. Mirroring (RAID level 1) provides an identical, redundant copy of the volumes data on two drives in the array, so that a single drive failure will not result in loss of important data. In addition, FireRAID allows standard HFS volumes to be created. FireRAID has been designed to allow booting from HFS as well as mirrored volumes with future Mac OS updates from Apple.

The VST FireRAID Array towers may be connected together to form larger arrays (up to 16 drives are supported). Data throughput is expected to range from 30 to 40MB/Sec RD (Mega Bytes per Second), 20 to 30MB/Sec WR, depending on the particular mechanisms used.

FireWire Standard
FireWire is integrated into every Power Macintosh G4, iMac DV and new PowerBook(R) Series products introduced today at MacWorld Tokyo. FireWire, a technology invented by Apple, is a high-speed serial interface and was adopted by the IEEE as a standard (IEEE 1394) in 1995. FireWire is revolutionizing desktop and portable digital video by allowing broadcast-quality video authoring at low consumer price points. It's fast, supporting transfer speeds to 400Mbps. It's scalable, supporting up to 63 devices. It's hot-pluggable, so users may unplug/re-plug devices on the fly without the need to shutdown, or restart their computers. VST offers portable and desktop hard drives, Zip Drives in 100MB and 250MB capacities, PC Cards for mobile users and RAID arrays all in FireWire solutions.

In addition to cross-platform compatibility with Microsoft Windows 98 SE and Windows 2000, the FireWire standard is being chosen for an ever-increasing array of consumer and internet multimedia devices like set-top boxes, digital VCRs, DVD-ROM, DVD-RAM, CD-R, CD-RW, DAT and dozens of digital camcorders and professional still image cameras -- all equipped with FireWire built-in.

Pricing and Availability *T Product: Model: Pricing: Availability: FireWire RAID Tower FWRAIDTWR $1,099 April 2000 FireRAID 24GB Array FWRAID24 $2,199 April 2000 FireRAID 48GB Array FWRAID48 $3,499 April 2000 FireRAID 72GB Array FWRAID72 $4,299 April 2000 FireRAID 100GB Array FWRAID100 $5,299 April 2000 All products include FireRAID software, Li-Ion Battery, AC Power Adapter. *T Note: Each array includes four (4) FW drives as follows: FWRAID24 4 - 6GB VST FireWire Drives FWRAID48 4 - 12GB VST FireWire Drives FWRAID72 4 - 18GB VST FireWire Drives FWRAID100 4 - 25GB VST FireWire Drives Custom build-to-order configurations are available

About VST
VST Technologies, Inc. is a market leader in the design, engineering and marketing of high performance personal storage solutions for the Internet and computer industries. VST products can be found as optional features or as after market add-ons from leading OEMs including Apple Computer, Fujitsu and IBM.

VST's products may be viewed and purchased through their web site at www.vsttech.com and from major distributors, resellers and most major catalog mail-order houses.

FireRAID and.SoftRAID are trademarks of SoftRAID, LLC. Apple, FireWire, PowerBook, Macintosh and iBook are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corp. Zip is a registered trademark of Iomega Corp. Microsoft and Windows are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation