Loaded with four Hitachi drives, the Glyph Technologies 8TB ForteRAID External Hard Drive Array is a production-quality external RAID array. It's designed for professional audio and video production. The ForteRAID features an ample 8TB of storage capacity; each of the four SATA II 3Gb/s disk drives is responsible for 2TB. The ForteRAID is equipped with multiple interface options, which affords greater flexibility when working. There are two FireWire 800 terminals, an eSATA interface, one FireWire 400, and one USB 2.0 port. The array can reach transfer speeds up to 3Gbps and the eSATA interface has a sustained transfer rate up to 230Mbps when using the high-performance EC2 eSATA card.
The ForteRAID is equipped with software selectable RAID 0, 1, 3, 5, 10 and spanning modes. RAID 0 is designed for increased speeds, and RAID 1 offers data redundancy and real-time backup. RAID 3 and 5 modes offer speed and data redundancy by striping data across all drives or storing data on a dedicated drive. RAID 10 creates two pairs of mirrored drives, which yields a good balance of protection and speed.
The internal RAID modes are set by the Glyph Manager software, which also displays drive health status, case/drive temperature, fan speed and any drive errors or rebuild failures. It uses an array of LEDs to alert users of potential problems, allowing time for data backup before a drive failure.
The ForteRAID affords both speed and protection. It has sufficient capacity and supports NLE applications like Avid Xpress and Adobe Premiere. Glyph has tested the ForteRAID with Final Cut Pro and Pro Tools as well. The four disk drives are housed in a scratch-resistant aluminum enclosure, which matches the aesthetic of other high-end audio and video gear. It's compatible with PC, Mac, Linux, and it features an auto-switching, universal power supply for international use.