Glyph GT 062 - Manual (Page 3)

About the GT 062 and Drive Modes
The GT 062 enclosure contains two hard disk drives, and can be configured to function as one single drive or
two individual drives. Through the use of the Glyph Manager software utility, it supports four drive modes:
JBOD, Spanning, RAID 1 (mirroring) and RAID 0 (striping). Each drive mode has its own advantages, depend-
ing upon the application.
JBOD mode is the simplest of all drive modes, you can think of it as simply two separate disks inside
the GT 062. In JBOD mode (standard storage lingo for Just a Bunch of Disks), the two internal disks ap-
pear and function as two independent drives. If you have a 1TB GT 062, for example, your computer
will see it as two 500GB drives. It is a secure drive mode because the failure of one drive will not af-
fect the health of the other. For this reason, JBOD mode is very well suited for audio production. The
GT 062 ships in JBOD mode.
In Spanning mode, the two drives are seen as one large drive and data is written sequentially across
them. When the first drive fills to the limit, data is then written to the second drive. This mode is use-
ful for applications requiring large volumes, but not requiring the speed of RAID 0. Spanning does
not provide any performance or redundancy benefits.
RAID 0 (striping) increases the performance of the drive system by spreading the data across two
drives. RAID 0 is a proven technology for editing video, working with huge graphics files, sound
libraries, and streaming instruments that play hundreds of samples simultaneously. In RAID 0 (strip-
ing) mode, the two drives are seen by the computer as one large drive, and reading and writing oc-
curs on both drives simultaneously. It is designed to increase the performance and data throughput
of the drive system. The GT 062’s built-in RAID controller splits each piece of data across both of the
drives in segments and distributes the I/O burden. Since data is written without any form of parity
data-checking, it allows for the fastest data transfer of all other RAID levels. However, if one drive
becomes damaged, the data on both drives can become corrupted. RAID 0 is not redundant or fault
tolerant like RAID levels 1, 3, and 5, but the trade off is that it’s the fastest of all RAID levels. MAKE
SURE TO BACKUP YOUR DATA OFTEN!
RAID 1 (mirroring) offers data redundancy and real-time backup by writing the same data to the
two hard drives at the same time. Should a drive failure happen, data is still available on the remain-
ing drive. In RAID 1 mode, the two drives are seen by the computer as one volume, but with half the
capacity. For example, a 1TB GT 062 will be seen as a 500GB drive. Reading and writing occurs on
both drives simultaneously so that each of the drives contains exactly the same data, mirroring each
other. If either of the drives should fail the other is there to seamlessly continue to provide operation.
GT 062 Ports
The fastest interface on the GT 062 is FireWire 800, and there are two FW800 ports on the rear panel. Of-
ficially, these IEEE 1394b ports run at up to 800Mbits/sec. One of these ports should be connected to your
computer, and the other should be connected to other downstream FireWire devices, if applicable. It doesn’t
matter which port you connect to the computer, they are functionally identical. If your computer has a
FireWire 800 port you can use the provided FireWire 800 9-pin cable. If your computer has a FireWire 400
port only, you can use the FireWire 400 port on the back of the GT 062, which provides 400Mbits/sec. If your
computer doesn’t have any FireWire ports you can either purchase a FireWire adapter card (recommended),
or use the USB 2.0 port on the back of the GT 062. A USB cable is NOT included with the GT 062.