Sonnet Technologies

If you've been thinking about storage, you've read the stories and seen the reviews; SSDs are hot right now. Not only do they offer tremendous performance and easily outperform hard disk drives, they are more reliable, their prices are dropping and you can get more capacity than ever. If you've got a Mac Pro® or Windows® desktop computer, you could just get a couple of 2.5" SSDs (plus necessary adapters) and install them in some empty drive bays (if there are any) and be done with it-but the 3Gb/s SATA interface in your computer won't support fast 6Gb/s SSDs at full speed. You could also get a 6Gb/s eSATA adapter plus external mount SSD storage, but they come with the excess baggage of power adapters and cable clutter. Sonnet engineered a great alternative - the Tempo™ SSD Pro. It is a fast 6Gb/s SATA PCI Express adapter cards that enables you to attach readily available 2.5" SSDs and install the assembly neatly into a single PCIe slot, no cables or drivers necessary.

Unlike other PCI Express SSD cards that rely on proprietary, premium priced SSD modules, Tempo SSD Pro uses standard 2.5" SATA drives that you choose. This allows you to select from the widest variety of SSDs, and buy the ones that best suit your capacity and performance needs while working within your budget.

Tempo SSD Pro is a full-length, full-height card to which you can install two SSDs; if you've got the space and need the best performance possible, this is the card for you. This Sonnet solution also supports OS X® or Windows® RAID features. The card uses a faster 6Gb/s SATA controller chipset and PCIe 2.0 x4 interface to deliver read speeds up to 960 MB/s from a pair of SSDs configured as a RAID 0 set. Like the Tempo SSD, AHCI compliance ensures installation of the card is simple-attach your SSDs with provided screws, mount the card in an available PCIe slot, and turn on your computer-the necessary drivers are installed automatically. Drive health monitoring is supported through S.M.A.R.T. data reporting.

Got a Thunderbolt connection, but no PCIe slot? Tempo SSD is ideal for use in the Sonnet's Echo Express Pro, or the xMac mini Server-the combo enables you to add high-speed SSDs to iMac®, Mac® mini, MacBook® Air, and MacBook Pro computers!

If you're a RED Rocket user, you already know that the card takes up two PCIe slots; one for the card itself and another for the HD-SDI bracket with two BNC connectors. The Tempo SSD Pro card includes an optional PCIe bracket with openings that supports the installation of the BNC connectors. Just move the BNC connectors to the optional bracket, swap the Tempo SSD Pro card's attached bracket with the optional bracket, and then you can use both the Rocket and Tempo SSD Pro card without requiring a third slot. With this combination of cards plus the Echo Express Pro chassis, you'll have a high-performance transcoding station, with fast mezzanine storage in a single, compact and portable package. Tempo SSD Pro offers a fresh twist on high-performance storage connectivity.