Gone is the day that you need a battery backup for Adaptec's RAID controller cards, as the company has introduced a NAND flash cache and capacitor duo. The company's series 5 RAID cards use cache memory to store data prior to leaving the card. Being volatile storage, data stored in the cache is lost during power failure.
Adaptec's 5Z Series cards now come armed with a "super capacitor" and secondary NAND cache. When a lack of power is presented, the capacitor contains enough juice to write the traditional cache's contents to the NAND cache, thus evading data loss. The capacitor and controller card are separate units, adjoined with a power cord. There are numerous benefits of kicking your battery to the curb - not least its lengthy recharge time. The super-capacitor charges in mere minutes of having a power source.
Adaptec is rolling out the 5Z upgrade to RAID controller cards with low port counts first. Among the cards is the 5445Z which has four internal and four external ports, the 5805Z with 8 internal ports and the 5405Z with 4 internal ports. The change will be phased into cards with higher ports progressively. For now, the mentioned devices are available and priced from $785 to $1,045.