Glyph ForteRAID Hard Drive Data Storage Array

A 4-Drive RAID Array with eSATA, Firewire, and USB

The Glyph ForteRAID offers huge capacity and blazing speed in a desktop package. Connected by eSATA, FireWire, or USB 2.0, the external hard drive gives you the freedom to move projects between multiple systems and use the fastest interface available on each system. The Glyph ForteRAID uses a unique management utility called Glyph Manager. It allows you to select RAID (redundant array of independant disks) modes, check the health and temperature of the enclosure and drives, and view any hard drive errors or rebuild failures. Glyph Manager (for Windows and Mac OS X) constantly monitors the ForteRAID as a background task, notifying you if your RAID needs attention.

Huge capacity with fault-tolerance built in.
The Glyph ForteRAID external hard drive supports up to 8 TB using 7,200 RPM drives. All models support RAID 0, 1, 3, 5, 10, and Spanning modes.

Your new production partner
The Glyph ForteRAID hard drive squeezes a ton of technology in a compact tabletop enclosure. Building on the same technology in the GT 062E, it uses an Oxford 936 chip which is capable of Hardware RAID 0, 1, 3, 5, 10, and Spanning modes. These RAID modes provide speed, fault-tolerance, or a combination of both. If a hard drive fails when running in one of the fault-tolorent drive modes (RAID 1, 3, 5, 10), you can remove and replace it with another without losing any data. The ForteRAID data storage system also allows for a “hot-spare”: an online spare drive present in the chassis, allowing for immediate rebuild without user intervention. Connected by FireWire 800, USB 2.0, or eSATA (with Glyph’s HighPoint card on Mac OS), the ForteRAID external data storage reports the health of the four internal drives using Glyph Manager software.

Designed for Audio and Video production
Glyph ForteRAID data storage features an eSATA port, which enables over 230MB/s sustained transfer rate in RAID 0 mode. With up to 8TB capacity, it supports NLE applications such as Avid Xpress, and Adobe Premiere; and has been tested with Final Cut Pro*. With large capacities, fast transfer rates and fault-tolerant RAID modes, the Glyph ForteRAID hard drive is also perfect for digital photography applications, content creation, and huge sound libraries. Audio production users may choose to configure the external hard drive in RAID 5 or RAID 10 mode, both of which are fault-tolerant modes, and can survive a disk failure without loosing valuable data. The Glyph ForteRAID hard drive system has been tested with Digidesign Pro Tools** in multiple RAID modes, check our Pro Tools track count page for test results.

Configured with Glyph Manager
A software utility for setting the internal RAID mode, Glyph Manager 4 also displays health status of the enclosure and drives inside. While many other RAID systems are configured using a rotary switch and LEDs, Glyph Manager offers a rich user interface which reports case temperature, fan speed, individual drives’ health status and temperature, as well as any drive errors or rebuild failures. Glyph Manager constantly monitors the health of the Glyph ForteRAID external hard drive as a background task using S.M.A.R.T. commands. If a problem is detected, it blinks the front LEDs red, and bounces an icon in the Mac OS X dock or displaying an error balloon from the Windows System Tray, alerting the user to open Glyph Manager for more information. By constantly monitoring the hard drives, you have a chance to backup your data before any is lost due to drive failure.

Configurable Drive Modes
RAID 0 (striping) is designed for increased speed but offers no redundancy benefits. RAID 0 spreads data across array members in blocks, and is ideal for situations where speed and capacity are most important. It’s a proven technology for video editing, working with huge graphics files, sound libraries, and streaming instruments that play hundreds of samples simultaneously. RAID 0 provides the full capacity of the hard drives, and is the default shipping drive mode.

RAID 1 (mirroring) uses only two of the 4 internal drives. It offers the data redundancy and real-time backup by writing the same data to two hard drives at the same time. Should a drive failure happen, data is still available on the remaining drive. Usable capacity is equal to capacity of 1 drive.

RAID 3 (striping with a dedicated parity drive) offers speed and data redundancy by using parity data which is stored on a dedicated drive. Should a drive failure happen, the remaining members of the array calculate the missing data and rebuild to a spare drive. The spare hard drive can be inserted after the failure, or can be online and waiting (hot spare). For RAID 3, usable capacity is 3/4 of the entire capacity. For RAID 3 + hot spare, usable capacity is half the entire capacity.

RAID 5 (striping with distributed parity) offers speed and data redundancy by using parity data which is striped across all drives. Should a drive failure happen, the remaining members of the array calculate the missing data and rebuild to a spare drive. The spare hard drive can be inserted after the failure, or can be online and waiting (hot spare). For RAID 5, usable capacity is 3/4 of the entire capacity. For RAID 5 + hot spare, usable capacity is half the entire capacity.

RAID 10 (striping + mirroring) creates two pairs of mirrored drives, and stripes across them for a very good balance of speed and redundancy. Useable capacity is equal to half of the entire capacity. RAID 10 is perfect for situations where the data integrity is more important than the capacity, such as audio recording and editing, photography, and sample libraries/sound libraries.

Spanning mode simply shows all four hard drives as one large volume. Spanning provides the full capacity of the drives, with no benefits to speed or redundancy.

Stylish Protective Enclosure
The Glyph ForteRAID hard drive is constructed with a scratch-resistant aluminum chassis, and includes a large 80mm low-RPM fan. The aluminum chassis offers additional heat transfer properties while allowing the system to be lightweight and portable.

Professional Power
Professionals know that a high quality power supply is one of the most important components in any piece of equipment. Glyph uses an internal power supply in the ForteRAID for this reason. All internal power supplies are fully auto-switching for international use.

The Warranty
The best warranty in the industry includes a 3 Year Full Warranty, and 1 Year of Free Advance Replacement on the removable drives.

**Glyph ForteRAID supports 2 streams of ProRes 422 1080i, 60 fps (HQ and lower); and 4 streams of Apple AIC 720p, 24 fps. Tested under FW800 and eSATA on Mac Pro with OS 10.5.8. Not qualified for Uncompressed HD (8-bit or 10-bit) playback or editing. *

**There is a current limitation with Pro Tools and volume size. Pro Tools does not support record or playback on volumes 2TB or larger.

There is a current limitation with large volumes in Windows. The Glyph ForteRAID hard drive does not show up correctly in Windows while connected via eSATA (Models above 2TB).

Older versions of Windows, such as 2000 and XP 32-bit, use Master Boot Record which doesn’t support volumes larger than 2TB. When the total capacity of the RAID is 2TB or higher, you must format the array using GPT in Windows.