Addonics Technologies has announced a very small storage appliance which, despite being the size of a four inch cube, packs the power and features of RAID storage devices that are much larger and up to three times as expensive.

Called the Compact RAID, the unit accommodates up to five 2.5", 9.5 mm height hard drives or SSDs to form a high performance storage configurable to various RAID levels up to RAID 5. Drives can easily be removed or added to the Compact RAID, much like a tape cartridge without special tools.

In addition to the powerful RAID engine, the Compact RAID comes built-in with a high speed eSATA connection and can deliver a screaming throughput up to 300 Mbytes/sec. The Compact RAID weighs just over a pound without drive. It also features a silent operation and the ability to be used as a boot drive or as additional storage.

The power and the small size of the Compact RAID make it an ideal RAID storage solution in a variety of applications, particularly in mobile environments or where there is a limitation of space or power.

The Compact RAID is fully OS independent and can be connected to any computer running Windows, Linux or Mac OS. The eSATA port can also be converted to USB 3.0/2.0 connection with the addition of the optional Addonics USB 3.0 - eSATA adapter.

List price is $149.