The Areca ARC-8050T5U-4A 88TB combines four 22TB enterprise hard drives with Areca's compact four-bay Thunderbolt 5 hardware RAID platform. It provides very high professional storage capacity while retaining the straightforward four-drive RAID architecture and relatively small desktop footprint of the ARC-8050T5U-4A.
Dedicated RAID processing, enterprise hard drives and support for both Thunderbolt 5 and USB-C 10Gb make it well suited to large video, audio, photography, backup and general workstation storage requirements.
88TB Enterprise Storage
Four 22TB 7200rpm enterprise hard drives provide 88TB of raw capacity and are covered by a five-year manufacturer warranty. Final usable capacity depends on RAID level and formatting. As a planning guide, RAID 5 provides approximately 66TB before formatting, while RAID 6 or RAID 10 provide approximately 44TB before formatting.
Thunderbolt 5 And USB-C 10Gb
The ARC-8050T5U provides two Thunderbolt 5 ports with up to 80Gb/s bidirectional Thunderbolt bandwidth. The same storage system can also connect directly to a compatible non-Thunderbolt USB-C computer at up to 10Gb/s, giving it broader host compatibility than Thunderbolt-only RAID storage.
Dedicated Hardware RAID
The ARC-8050T5U-4A uses an 800MHz SAS RAID-on-Chip controller with 1GB DDR3-800 on-board cache and ECC protection. RAID processing, parity calculations and rebuild operations are handled by the storage controller rather than relying on the host computer's CPU.
Flexible RAID Protection
Supported modes include RAID 0, 1, 3, 5, 6 and 10 together with Single Disk and JBOD. This allows the four-drive set to be configured for performance, capacity, drive-failure protection or a balance appropriate to the intended workflow.
SAS/SATA-Only 4A Architecture
The ARC-8050T5U-4A provides four 6Gb/s SAS/SATA drive channels and is specifically the SAS/SATA-only four-bay model. It is distinct from the ARC-8050T5U-4N, which additionally supports U.2/U.3 NVMe drives.
Display And Daisy-Chain Connectivity
A full-size DisplayPort 2.1 output is provided alongside the two Thunderbolt 5 ports. Thunderbolt 5 supports Bandwidth Boost up to 120Gb/s for compatible display-intensive workflows, while additional compatible Thunderbolt peripherals can be daisy-chained from the RAID.
Independent RAID Management
The array can be configured and monitored through the front-panel LCD, through the host connection or independently using the dedicated Gigabit Ethernet management port. Areca's McRAID browser interface and ArcSAP provide additional local and remote administration options.
Data Protection And Security
Controller-based AES 128-bit and 256-bit hardware encryption is supported together with compatible self-encrypting drives. Additional RAID functions include drive-health monitoring, array verification, disk scrubbing, hot-spare support and online RAID migration.
Compact Desktop Design
The four-bay enclosure measures 123 x 165.6 x 232mm and uses a single intelligently controlled 2700rpm cooling fan. Areca specifies approximately 37dB sound pressure for the ARC-8050T5U-4A chassis.
Configured And Tested By Rent a Raid
Rent a Raid can preconfigure and test the system before dispatch, including RAID 5 or RAID 6 setup for the intended Mac or Windows workflow. This allows the hardware RAID set to arrive already created rather than requiring the customer to configure the array from scratch.
Host Compatibility
The ARC-8050T5U supports compatible Thunderbolt 5 and Thunderbolt 4 Mac and Windows systems, compatible Thunderbolt 3 Macs, and USB-C 10Gb host operation.