Adaptec, Seagate plot Ultra2 SCSI 80Mb/sec raid

Adaptec and Seagate will early in February take the wrapping off Ultra2 SCSI, a backwards-compatible extension of SCSI-3 that takes the storage drive interconnect technology to an 80Mb/sec bandwidth in "wide" 16-bit mode. Although other drive makers have had Ultra2 drives prepared for a little while, the tie-up with SCSI card king Adaptec is likely to put a rocket under the market.

I/O specialist Adaptec and hard drive behemoth Seagate will collaborate to offer resellers kits combining the former's interface cards with the latter's Barracuda 9LP Ultra2 SCSI hard drive.

As well as offering very fast data transfer rates for I/O-intensive applications such as CAD and DTP, Ultra2 drives will also quadruple the cable length of orthodox Ultra SCSI, making it more viable for external storage devices and clustering environments. That should take it deep into battle with SSA and Fibre Channel.

To aid resellers move to Ultra2 SCSI, Adaptec and Seagate will offer Web-based training and technical support.