Though there are a few documents related to configuring the Glyph ForteRaid hard drive array, it is hard to come by the correct way to configure it for using a Raid 5 setup for a Windows 7 system while utilizing an eSATA connection. This guide is on how to prepare the ForteRaid drive array to run on your Windows 7 PC in Raid 5 mode. There are no warranties, guarantees, or implies of any type here that these steps will work in your particular setup. This is only a guide and it is not endorsed or used by any manufacturer, dealer, or distributor. Use at your own risk or peril of loss of data. Again, this is for configuration as a Raid 5 setup only. As always, remember to backup your data to another location before attempting formatting of a hard drive, as the data WILL be deleted.
I chose the Glyph ForteRaid 4 Terabyte drive array solution as it met my needs, my budgetary constraints, my Raid desires, and offered the best overall warranty, while Glyph’s reputation still preceeds itself. Many other manufacturers were considered, such as OWC Mercury Elite Pro (which is pretty much the same unit as the Glyph), the G-Technology Speed Q, and the Sonnet Fusion. Realistically, they all offer similar performance, raid options, and standard warranties, however, Glyph offers an additional 2-year basic data recovery, and 1 year advanced replacement warranty above and beyond the standard 3 year warranty for the hardware itself and 3 years on the drives. As a side note regarding G-Technology, I had the opportunity to setup a 4TB unit for a company that uses a Mac Laptop. Setup was fairly straight forward, but there was no real confirmation that the drive was setup correctly. It does display a popup window at the end of configuring the Raid setup as per the instructions, but it does not read simply ‘setup complete’. Also, the available Raid choices were only 0 or 5 and there was no monitoring function at the time. Hopefully these items will be modified to help the user in the near future. I was glad to have gone through this process as well, which gave me the chance to know how their system gets configured and runs, as well as it was in my top 3 choices of array’s to purchase.
From here, the next level of Raid enclosure gets into miniSAS based units. These units, while they do run faster, become more expensive rather quickly, as you need to purchase a separate miniSAS host adapter card additionally if the array does not come with one already. These do however, become necessary when working with larger 10-bit HD video. There are also some enclosure manufacturer’s such as SansDigital and Stardom that offer similar array setups, minus the drives that go in them. Many offer a 3-year warranty as well. Other manufacturer’s that were considered at some point along the line were CalDigit and Maxx Digital. They both have an excellent reputation but tended to be out of my price range. Other vendor/manufacturers to consider, based on your budget are Dulce, iStoragePro, RocStor, DataVideo, ProAVIO, Drobo, and Studio Network Solutions. There are others, but you need to do you homework and assess what your workflow requires. Some day I hope to move up into this next category of enclosure Raid system.
Now, regarding hardware vs software raid controllers in these types of arrays. During my time researching, I found a few different things regarding this particular array. First of all, it uses the Oxford 936 chipset in its box. I discovered that there are 3 versions of this chipset. The 936DS, 936SE, and the 936QSE chipset.
The 936DS is used for dual storage arrays for creating a Raid 0 or 1 array setup. The 936QSE chipset has the ability to be configured in Raid 0, 1, 3, 5, or 10 configuration. While with the 936SE, well, I was unable to confirm its features as of this writing. All chipsets have an integrated hardware Raid controller that is controlled via a software utility. This is a great advantage over software-based controllers, which are generally shown to be slower than that of hardware-based controllers. The Glyph ForteRaid is advertised as having the 936 chipset in it, but does not specify which version. Another interesting note, is that in researching different arrays in this price range, I came across the OWC (Other World Computing) Mercury Elite Pro which just happens to appear to be the exact same product as the Glyph ForteRaid. OWC is primarily geared towards Mac-based products but is configurable for PC’s as well. Their website specifications for this unit explicitly state that the 936QSE chipset is being used in this unit. It is for this reason that I think the Glyph array has the same internal parts as the OWC version. One item in this topic I am still unsure of is whether or not the internal backplane of the ForteRaid is a single PM (port-multiplier) that all four drives connect onto or if they are truely direct connections to the internal PCB board to be controlled by the chipset…and I am certainly not pulling mine apart to find out!
For me, the last topic is really just the esthetics of the array itself, as it is not pretty compared to its competitors…to me anyways. Most manufacturers tend to build or use a more ‘traditional’ desktop array setup with four drives spaces mounted horizontally, stacked atop each other with individual drive trays. The Glyph unit mounts its drive vertically beside each other.
However, you must remove a perforated front cover in order to access the drives. The Glyph unit does not include a locking front panel, unlike what was displayed on the OWC website. Each drive tray has a screw that holds/locks that drive into place. There is also a fan on the rear of the case that draws air in from the front across the drives to help cool them. It is for this reason the design of the case works well with the air being drawn in through the perforations on the front cover of the case, allowing air to circulate across all the drives. Most other manufacturers have a similar feature but I am not sure with the drives mounted horizontally, if the drives get better cooling. Another feature about the case I am not crazy about is that to access and remove the front panel, you must slide a plastic switch that is located on the bottom of the array unit towards the front. By sliding this switch, it allows you to slide the entire array unit forward from inside the outer housing.
This is quite cumbersome should you need to replace a drive quickly. With the horizontally mounted drive unit arrays, you can just slide the drive tray out, replace the drive, and slide it back in, a much more convenient operation without removal of a front cover. On the Glyph and OWC, you need to slide the switch underneath, slide the array forward, remove the front panel, unscrew the drive tray, slide it out, replace the drive, slide it back in and reverse the process. This is really Tom-ay-toe vs. Tom-ah-toe in the grand scheme of things. Though I do actually like the drive tray in the horizontally mounted units better than the Glyph, but again, this is just personal taste on a cosmetic issue. I certainly hope to not have to replace the drives anytime too soon or at all for that matter.
Right out of the box, the array comes configured in a Raid 0 mode to work with a Mac. It comes with an eSATA PCIe card in case your motherboard does not have an eSATA port. Mine happens to have 2 built-in to the backplane of the motherboard, as well as a front mounted port in the case. I am taking advantage of the ability to plug into an available 6Gbs port on the motherboard from this front eSATA jack. It also came with an assortment of cables including a USB, Firewire 400, Firewire 800, and an eSATA cable. What prompted this article however, were the directions for setting it up with a Windows PC. They are a bit all over the place and are not so easy to follow. After a few experimental tries, I was able to get it setup correctly and working properly. To note, there are a few considerations about this unit, not just the instructions.
First, which is pretty major, is that the Glyph Management software utility is only manageable through the USB interface. This is actually stated in the user manual but is not easily found. It also states that communication between the array and the management software does occur using Firewire or eSATA (using only an onboard motherboard eSATA port), however you cannot configure the array using anything but the USB connection. Later, after I had the array all setup, I tested each cable to see exactly what was being communicated. It turned out that they would only display ‘My Computer’ in their dialog window when attached, no actually drive information.
Another related issue, more a configuration step, is that once the array is configured for Raid 5 mode, you must perform the formatting of the array via the connectivity you want to use in your final setup configuration. What I mean is that once the Raid option is configured, you need to disconnect the array from USB and re-connect it via the solution you want to use and format it while attached with that connection. In my case, I wanted to run the array via eSATA, which meant that I would need to configure the array in Raid 5 using the USB interface, then disconnect the array from the USB (properly through the Windows OS) and then re-connect the array using the provided eSATA cable, and then format the array.
I also found that I did not need to power down during this operation. I did however need to reboot for the drive to be recognized via the eSATA cable afterwards. Once my array was successfully formatted in Raid 5 mode, I connected the array via each of the provided connections, which included USB, Firewire 400, and eSATA. It was successfully recognized on each connection showing the correct drive space and letter. Though this was not what had originally happened.
Interestingly enough, originally, when I configured and formatted the array, all by way of USB connection, the array was NOT recognized using the eSATA connection. To confirm what I was seeing, I had copied some files over to the array via the USB connection, but when the array was connected by way of eSATA, the files were not viewable. Right, so now that I have you confused, just follow the configuration steps below. It may just save you the time I spent figuring out how to do this.
So on-ward to the actual configuration process. Since out of the box it is configured for a Mac, you must re-configure it for use with a Windows PC system. With your Glyph ForteRaid out of the box, have your USB cable ready, and connect the power cord but do NOT turn it on. Now follow these steps:
Glyph Manager and Initializing:
1) Install the Glyph Manager utility software from the provided CD or you can download it from the Glyph website. This software allows you to configure the drive array in one of Raid 0, 1, 3, 5, 10 through the software utility.
2) Next, using the USB cable, connect the Glyph drive array to your PC. This is the only way for the Glyph Manager software utility to communicate with the array; Firewire and eSATA are not supported for configuration of the drive array as noted earlier.
3) With the array connected via USB to the computer, turn on the array and power up your PC if it isn’t already running.
4) Next, you will need to initialize the array within Windows. Use the Glyph document ‘Windows Formatting Instructions’ available on their website. The key will be to only initialize and not format until later.
5) To initialize, click ‘Start’, right click ‘Computer’, choose ‘Manage’, then on the left side of the window look for ‘Disk Management’ and double click it
6) Now, find the new drive array shown as ‘un-allocated’ disk, right click on it and choose ‘initialize’
7) Next, it is important to choose ‘GPT’ in the dialog popup when presented. This is for large volume support. (all of this is in the Windows 7 formatting guide)
8) DO NOT format the drive yet as you need to configure the Raid type first.
Raid Configuration:
1) Now, with the array connected via USB, start the Glyph Raid Manager utility. You should see the array with its drive listed and it should show the raid config that is currently setup on it.
2) Using the Glyph Manual as your guide, click the ‘Change Drive Configuration’ button.
3) Select ‘Raid 5’ if that is your desired configuration. I chose the 4-drive version instead of 3 and a hot spare. This is also where I am lead to believe that the chipset is the 936QSE as it shows a Raid 3 option, which didn’t appear to be part of the 936DS chipset in my research.
4) Click through and accept all the setup changes. You most likely will get a ‘quick-removal – Bad’ error at the end. This is just for firewire connections as confirmed in the Glyph instructions. Once completed, it should display the raid type you chose, and the health of each drive.
5) If you reached this step, then great! Now you need to format it.
Formatting:
1) First, choose to dis-connect the array from the USB port via Windows OS recommended best practices and either power down your PC or reboot it.
2) Remember to remove the USB cable from the drive array also.
3) Next, plug one end of an external eSATA cable into the array and the other end into an available eSATA jack on your PC; This cable has very different terminated ends than on an internal eSATA cable.
4) Power up your PC.
5) Once your PC is up and running, run Glyph Manager and you will notice the Raid configuration software does not display the setup any longer. This is because it can only do so via a USB connection, which was discussed earlier.
6) Next, go back to your ‘Windows Formatting Instructions’ document and follow the instructions for formatting your drive.
7) Again, click ‘Start’, right click ‘Computer’, choose ‘Manage’, click ‘Disk Management’ from the menu on the left of the pop up window, find the Array listed, and right click on it and choose ‘Format’.
8) You will want to choose the entire volume (as it is a Raid 5 now), which will yield roughly 2.7-3.0 Terabytes.
9) Take this time to name the volume as well; This will be my ‘Projects’ drive
10) Windows OS does its thing and then you are now finished!
11) Lastly, always remember to re-start your PC after major configurations.
Your disk array should now be listed in the Disk Management window with the label you gave it and should show 2.7-3.0 Terabytes available. You are now set to start putting your data on it. Should you feel unsure as to its setup, you can always unplug the array from the eSATA cable and plug it back in to your PC using the USB cable (make sure only one cable is plugged into the array at one time!) to see that the array is still configured in the Raid mode you chose. You can also monitor the drive arrays health from the USB connection, something that is not offered on other manufacturer’s drive arrays that I am aware of.
As of this writing, AVID ProTools 9 is noted as not being able to support recording or playback from a drive that is larger than 2TB. I was able to successfully playback a video project with 10 tracks for a period of time, but it did eventually crash. I continue to test this ability and search for updates regarding a fix for this issue.
