FastMac announced the immediate availability of its 4x dual layer Blu-ray drive burner for Apple Mac Pro and PowerMac G5. The drive can write 50 GB of data to a disc at speeds of more than 1 GB/minute.

The new 5.25-inch, tray loading drive uses one of the fastest Mac-compatible Blu-ray mechanisms to provide up to 50 GB of storage on a dual or double layer disc, without sacrificing compatibility with standard DVD and CD recordable media. Using a SATA connection, the drive’s 4x BD-R DL mechanism allows professional Mac users to burn up to 50GB of data on 1 disc in less than 50 minutes.

The drive is also compatible with standard DVD and CD media and can write to DVD-R and DVD+R media at 12x speed in single layer and 8x speed in dual/double layer mode. It can rewrite to DVD+RW media at 8x speeds and DVD-RW media at 6x speeds. The drive also supports CD-R reading and writing at up to 40x speeds and CD-RW burning at up to 24x speeds.

The 4x Blu-ray optical drive upgrade requires Mac OS X 10.4.8. It is compatible with the Mac Pro and PowerMac G5. The PMG5 will require SATA to IDE/ATAPI converter cable. Native support for Finder burning is not yet available and requires third party software such as Adobe Premiere CS3 or Roxio’s Toast 8 Titanium.

The tray loading 4x Blu-ray drive is priced at a special introductory US$579.95. Each drive carries a 1-year warranty and a 30-day money back guarantee.