DAW users often think of a hard drive as the "bank" where precious work and irreplaceable assets are organized and stored. With that in mind, why trust a brand "X" FireWire drive that was on sale at the local discount electronics store? Professionals understand that a drive failure during a session is disastrous. Designed for serious use, Glyph offers tested and verified drives with a three-year warranty and overnight replacement guarantee during the first year.

The GT050Q is the latest drive system in the GT Series from Glyph that features Seagate Technology's new SATA drive technology. GT050Q drives come in many sizes from 80GB to 500GB--all with Seagate 7,200 RPM drives, Oxford 924 bridge chip, 8MB buffer cache and an average seek time of 8ms. This standalone desktop drive weighs a little more than four pounds and is housed in a stainless steel case with optional 19-inch rack mount hardware available. To absorb the transmission of the drive's acoustic noise to the outside, three-layer laminated metal sound-damping brackets attach the drive to the internal chassis. The GT has a built-in power supply (no wall wart to chase down!) and a quiet cooling fan but the big surprise is on the back panel.

The rear panel has five interface port connectors. Known as a 'quad' interface, there are: a single Firewire 400 port, two Firewire 800 ports, USB connector and one eSATA port. eSATA provides for even faster transfer data rates than FireWire 800--up to 1.5Gbits/sec! eSATA is an offshoot of internal SATA 1 and eSATA ports are being added to the newest PC motherboards. You can also add a separate PCI card to your computer--one card/port per eSATA drive--you can't chain them together like Firewire drives. The GT050Q, using the eSATA port, can provide up to 109MB/sec transfer rates making the drive ideal for video editing and/or huge audio track counts.

A 250GB GT050Q drive immediately went to work within a new Pro Tools HD3 TDM system. Connected by a single FireWire 800 cable, (both an 800 and 400 cable are supplied) the drive never even worked hard to play and record 96 tracks at once. Furthermore, there is no noise--it is quieter than the internal hard drive in the system's MAC G5 Quadcore computer. There is no need to use a sound isolation cabinet for this drive (or the computer)--they both can operate directly adjacent the workstation desk.

Copying sessions from the studio for work elsewhere is easier than ever because with four different connectivity options, there is never a situation where the studio's computer does NOT have the proper port--use the slowest USB port if you must.

A remarkable and worthwhile studio workhorse that will instill a quiet confidence and piece of mind within your daily session routine, the Glyph GT050Q drive is highly recommended for serious audio/video professionals. Contact Glyph technologies at 800-335-0345 or www.glyphtech.com