HighPoint launched the RocketAIC 6542AWW, an industry-first external RAID storage drive with 492 TB of storage. It achieves this through eight Solidigm D5-P5336 NVME SSDs that deliver 61.44TB each while delivering a 28-GB/s “real-world” transfer speed.
According to HighPoint, the most outstanding characteristic of this device is that it’s smaller than a shoebox, measuring just 9.25 x 8.27 x 4.84 inches (L x W x H). By comparison, a typical shoebox is 13 x 7.5 x 4.75 inches.
The RocketAIC 6542AAW could achieve its fast transfer speed via a dedicated host-to-device PCIe Gen4 x16 card attached directly to the server or workstation motherboard. This ensures that the external storage device can run at its optimum speed while ensuring that it doesn’t consume power or add additional heat to the host computer from its bank of SSDs. It’s also configurable in RAID0, RAID1, or RAID10 for the ultimate performance and redundancy.
At the back of the external storage device, you’ll find a rocker power switch, a mute button, a slide switch, a USB-C port, the PCIe Gen4 x16 outlet, an Ethernet port, the PSU socket, and a Kensington lock slot. It also has two large fans and one smaller fan for device cooling.
The eight bays are also hot-swappable, making service and system upgrades easier. Solidigm also plans to launch a 122TB version of the D5-P5336 in early 2025, which means that eight drives will have a total capacity of 976TB. However, we are unsure if that will be compatible with the HighPoint device.
This compact external storage solution would make high-performance data storage and backup more effortless and accessible for small and medium enterprises. The company says it is ideal for data-intensive applications like high-speed data acquisition, music & effects post-production, and rapid backup and recovery workflows.
However, you must be prepared to spend a pretty penny to get this device, as it costs $78,999. It comes with all the drives included, though, which cost more than $7,340 apiece, so you’re saving money on that.
