BIOS: Technology Means Business

Miglia Technology's MediaBank HS-Ri is a neat product that allows you to upgrade a desktop PC to RAID 1 technology. The product suits applications requiring high fault tolerance at a low cost, without heavy emphasis on large amounts of storage capacity or top performance. It could be especially useful in situations where the perception is that having a duplicated set of data is more secure than using parity. For this reason, the MediaBank HS-Ri could be useful for backing up accounting and other financial data, as well as small database systems, enterprise servers, and for individual users requiring fault tolerance with a minimum of hassle and cost (since redundancy using parity generally requires more expensive hardware).

Pros: Easy to use; hot swappable; built-in LCD; uses just one IDE cable
Cons: Requires two 5.25in. bays; no SATA support; Windows only

The MediaBank HS-Ri is designed for smaller companies looking for an easy-to-use and relatively flexible solution to help protect data against hard disk drive failure. Of course, the ability to hot-swap 5.25in. hard disk drives also makes backing up your entire system a snap - by mirroring data on two drives, the MediaBank HS-Ri can completely automate the backup process. You can then just take out the bottom drive and store it safely each night.

The internal solution features two easily-removable hard disk drive trays (no hard drives supplied as standard) and built-in hardware support for RAID 1 (mirroring) means no additional software is needed. As well as the ability to hot swap the drives (remove and insert without turning off your computer), the fact that data is written to two hard disk drives simultaneously will help to prevent total data loss if one of the drives were to fail. Hardware support for mirroring also helps to remove potential software conflicts and provides an automatic backup of your vital data.

Short for Redundant Array of Independent (or Inexpensive) Disks, RAID is a category of disk drives that employ two or more drives in combination for fault tolerance and performance. RAID disk drives are used frequently on servers but aren't generally necessary for personal computers. RAID 1 is usually implemented as mirroring - a drive has its data duplicated on two different drives using either a hardware RAID controller or software (generally via the operating system).

So, if either drive fails, the other continues to function as a single drive until the failed drive is replaced. Conceptually simple, RAID 1 is popular for those who require fault tolerance and don't need top-notch read performance. A variant of RAID 1 is duplexing, which duplicates the controller card as well as the drive, providing tolerance against failures of either a drive or a controller. It is much less commonly seen than straight mirroring.

Using the MediaBank HS-Ri is really easy, as long as you've got a computer case big enough to accommodate two spare 5.25in. drive bays. Thankfully, it requires just one IDE cable, unlike RAID which uses two (one for each drive). To facilitate access for backup or maintenance operations, hard drives are installed in drive trays, which can be removed by simply pulling them out of the front of the case.

The device even ships with a spare hard drive tray, allowing you to keep a drive containing all your data in a secure location. For maximum data security, you could also run a mirror setup and swap the second drive periodically to always have an 'offline' backup.

Drive duplication is fully automated, so there's no need for human intervention, and you can remove one of the two mirrored drives without affecting the availability of your data - the MediaBank HS-Ri simply synchronises the second drive as soon as it is inserted. To create an offline backup, just pull out a drive from MediaBank HS-Ri and store it in a secure location. All your data will then be contained on this drive, preventing it from being damaged by a virus or any other kind of data corruption.

Once your drive is out of the unit, you can then replace it with another one. The MediaBank HS-Ri will then automatically duplicate your data. By performing these operations, you can ensure that you have a daily copy of all your data in a safe place - without having to manage complicated backup software or unreliable tapes.

The built-in monochrome 2-line LCD informs you of the current status of your drives as well as all tasks performed by the built-in RAID hardware circuit. Disk rebuilds, errors and failures are all also displayed and backed up by an audible alarm, and there's a key lock on the front of the unit (two keys are provided) to prevent unauthorised removal of any hard disk drives.

On the downside, the MediaBank HS-Ri uses an older ATA 100/133 interface (ATA/133 cable supplied), so it doesn't support newer and faster SATA hard disk drives. Indeed, Miglia Technology goes even further by saying that only ATA/5 and ATA/6 drives from IBM/Hitachi, Maxtor and Seagate are supported. The device is not compatible with Western Digital drives. [7.5]