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Accusys Acuta 4S
Milind Bandekar, Aug 31, 2005 1010 hrs ISTFour hard drives in a RAID for maximum performance and security!
2TB of storage with RAID support, hot swapping, portable, easy installation, SATA interface
Overpriced, Not max at performance, useless software, setting up Raid 5 is a painful task.
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Hard Drives are the storage area of your system, where all programs and applications are stored and written to. With programs needing more space and the PC being used in many areas it is recommended that you always opt for the largest capacity you can afford to meet your needs. 160 Gigs at max is what suffices most of the home users. However, things are different at the professional level. With loads of data manipulation over the network and unfortunate drive crashes, data security and protection, it becomes a critical issue. Without some kind of backup solution, business simply can't proceed as usual on such situations. Available servers depend on the administrators who set them up and manage them to also establish and maintain RAID arrays at high expense. Also, it's impossible to change out multiple drives in succession or to add additional drives or arrays without incurring downtime. The Taiwanese manufacturer Accusys offers its Acuta 4S which holds answers to your business solutions. This newly designed ATA external interface offers you a secured storage solution without bothersome setup procedures, using the conventional components and standard interfaces.
About the Acuta 4S
Acuta 4 is offered in 3 different interfaces such as USB 2.0, Firewire and SATA. We used the SATA version in our testing, because technically it s the only interface that provides highest level of performance with its high data transfer rate over USB and Firewire. Acuta 4S is a 4-bay RAID system technology that provides storage capacity up to 2 TB (yes, 2 Tera Bytes) that harnesses the power of four disks arrayed together! Acuta 4S comes with its own internal power supply, so the SATA host connector draws no extra power from the computer.
Setting up this RAID-Storage box
SATA connectors appears primarily on motherboards and aren't available to link to external devices as easily as USB. Thus, the Acuta 4S ships a SATA connector that connects to the motherboard internally and the other end can be fixed as a panel like any other PCI cards providing an instant plug and play access for connectivity externally, almost like any USB port.
Acuta 4S must be loaded with up to four identical SATA drives. A RAID 1 array requires 2 drives, and a RAID 5 array needs at least 3. An optional hot spare can also be defined, so that in case of defect on any other drive, the rebuilding of the array becomes immediately available with the help of the other drive opted for it. Selecting a specific RAID level is made available with the DIP switch on the back of the Acuta 4S enclosure followed by few quick settings from the LCD menu on the front panel. Once the device has been configured with the drives installed, the initialization process begins. We had a functioning RAID array based on the four Western Digital WD740 (10,000 RPM drives). However setting it up for the RAID level 5 was a painful task. We spent almost a day on getting it set to work on Raid 5 level, whereas it s supposed to do that in no time. But then we gave a try by upgrading the firmware from the preloaded version 1.0 to 1.4 which is available on their website and only then it started rebuilding the array, otherwise it was an impossible task. The moment we did that, things fell well in place and then the initialization was just a breeze. The computer detects this device as a new hard drive after reboot, treating the array as a single physical drive.
Partitioning and formatting the Acuta 4S later on is an optional feature according to the user s requirements. A serial cable that comes along with the Acuta 4S is used to link it to its host computer for monitoring the device status, provided that the software that came along with is installed on the host machine. There's also a small LCD display on the front of the device that displays the different menu options and the status that supports device controls. Drive status is also made easy to determine with the two LEDs provided onto its front panel on each bay respectively.
Hot Swapping
Drives: Once you re-insert the drive tray, the Acuta 4S automatically starts rebuilding the array. This process could take anywhere between an hour or so, depending upon the drive s speed and capacity. This is an excellent feature, where user s can swap drives on the fly with the device on and running without incurring downtime or any DATA loss in the entire procedure.
Fan: Cooling is the main aspect for any component to keep performing well. Similarly the Acuta 4S also comes with a fan integrated such that it protects the entire assembly from heating. However with constant running and usage there are chances of this fan getting wearied-out. Hence the fan in Acuta 4S comes with a removable cooling fan module that makes swapping easier.
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