Introduction

Areca Technology Corporation started life in 1999 and was formed by a team of storage product engineers in Taipei, Taiwan. The core of Areca is their dedicated research and development team that is responsible for Areca's success in the storage industry.

Around five years ago Areca's hard work and dedication propelled the company into a leading role in the storage controller market. The first to catch on were enthusiast power users who learned that Areca products at the time were outperforming those from industry power players LSI and Adaptec. It took at least two product cycles for these companies to catch back up to the data transfer levels being offered by Areca's products.

Today we are looking at Areca's latest flagship offering from the new ARC-1880 Series product line. The ARC-1880ix-24 is the most advanced controller in the lineup and offers both internal and external connectivity. The controller also uses a user upgradable cache module (1GB standard, up to 4GB optional) that allows for high speed RAID redundancy without penalty.

Before we get too deep in the specifications, let's move onto the specification and features page and take a look at the whole lineup.