electronic MUSICIAN by Barry Rudolph

Glyph Production Technologies’ PortaGig 62 is a portable RAID data storage system. This diminutive unit (123mm W X 92mm D X 43mm H) is the offspring of Glyph’s larger desktop RAID, the GT 062E. The unit’s all-metal case contains two 2.5-inch hard drives (made by either Seagate or Hitachi) and is available in a variety of speed/size configurations: 5,400 RPM in 1.2, 2, and 3TB sizes and 7,200 RPM in 320GB, 500GB, 640GB, and 1TB (tested here). All of these drive systems have transfer speeds of up to 177MB/second.

PortaGig 62 is cooled by a small internal fan and is bus-powered via FireWire 800. For FW 400 use, its bilingual 9-pin socket will accept an 800-to-400 adapter cable, or you can connect using either the USB 2.0 or eSATA ports. Also included are a wall-wart external power supply, FW 800 cable, and on/off switch.

PortaGig 62 ships with Glyph Manager software for configuring and monitoring the health of all connected and supported Glyph drives. If a problem arises, the blue activity LED on a drive’s front panel will glow red and the GM icon will animate in the Mac’s dock or generate an error balloon on Windows computers. While an updated version is in progress, GM works in 64-bit systems only if you connect drives using USB 2. GM configures PortaGig to run in any of three modes: RAID 0, RAID 1, and Spanning. RAID 0 mode does block-level striping without parity or mirroring. RAID 0 improves drive performance but offers no redundancy. RAID 1, or “mirroring,” allows data to be written identically to both internal drives for redundancy—i.e. real-time backup. As long as one drive is working, your data is safe. Spanning mode writes data sequentially across both drives—when the first one fills, the second one continues onward. read more...