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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

LTO-3 still the way to go?

I like an use both fibre channel and SCSI. In regards to the digi beta layoff. Well I hate to break it to you depending on the time required that layoff was cheap. People don't realize the amount of time/knowledge to do a red project layoff to tape. Also here's another question for you, you know the quicktimes used in final cut are 8 bit right ? You will have your tape returned to you by broadcast, if that is the case, for original creative material if it is 8 bit and shows the heavy artifacting that the reference quicktimes can create.

Right now to do a layoff directly to tape your best option is scratch, but oh yeah you can't lay off to tape from the nvidia accelerated outputs (I know I have two seats) so you're back to a DPX render at 7:1 render times. It just goes on and on.

Anyway back to data backup solutions, in regards to the 600A be careful its a hardware based proprietary system. IE meaning I can't go to the website pay the 150 bucks to Dantz or Bru to get the data off of your tapes when you've sold the project and need to go through final layoff and QC.
 
Jeff.. I take it your referring to the QT wrappers at 8bit with artifacts not any 8bit output? ie HDcam.

Scratch.. no realtime output to tape? thought people were claiming so just recently in a thread? at least 1080 out ? Or is this the same as lustre? realtime working but have to then render to put to tape? :-/

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=9298

seems workflows are getting more confusing that easier...
 
SATA drives for archiving

SATA drives for archiving

I'll give my dissenting opinion FWIW.

I'm about to get rid of my tape drive. I've found tapes to be no more reliable than disks for long-term storage. Disks on a shelf in a climate controlled environment don't go bad, in my experience. What kills disks are using them, thermal cycling, and moisture. Tapes are much more complicated, because they have lubricants to fight friction against the heads, they're flexible and subject to stretching and other kinds of mechanical problems. Tapes can die from just being stored at 40 degrees (e.g. in the garage), whereas disk drives can be stored in a freezer. I've had failed tapes on more than once occasion with supposedly quality tapes stored in the same environment as the disks, while the only disks that have gone bad on me are the ones that were in heavy use. They just wore out.

(For those of you with horror stories about "firewire drives" I'll point out that often it's the firewire enclosure and not the disk itself that goes bad and when it is the disk, it's from a known bad manufacturer who's turning out cheap crap. I've had 2 firewire enclosures blow out on me, but in both cases I was able to extract the disk, put it in a new enclosure, and continue working without a problem.)

Quality SATA drives can be had for $0.20/GB. That's competitive with LTO-3 tapes and cheaper than LTO-4 tapes. And you don't need to spend thousands of dollars on a drive and a host adapter, nor do you have problems with supplying data fast enough to keep the tape drive moving at full speed, sequential access problems, etc. For about $200 you buy an RTX100-Q and you have FireWire800, eSata, and even USB access to your SATA drives like they were tapes or floppies. And given the installed base of SATA drives, I'm more confident I'll be able to find a cheap way to read my SATA drive on my computer in 5 years than I am that I'll be able to find a cheap way to read my tapes in 5 years. I've been spending $300+ per computer upgrade just for a SCSI card to keep my tape drive connected.

If you really want long-term archiving, like 20 years, or 80 years, then I don't know. The Library of Congress is archiving audio recordings on LPs because that's the only proven long-term storage medium that is not at risk of technological obsolescence, while on the other hand committing to maintaining a huge fault-tolerant SAN to store digital media, constantly maintaining it. That's the best the professionals have come up with. For me, I think 5-7 years from now disks will be had for $0.05 to $0.10/MB and I'll just copy the old disks onto new disks if no better technology emerges.

So do some math and on how much storage you really need and what that will cost for host adapter, tape drive, and tapes vs. just storing it all on SATA drives. Maybe you can find a better deal on tapes than I've found, but so far I haven't seen anything where even 20TB of tapes is enough cheaper than 20TB of SATA drives to make up the cost of an LTO-3 drive setup.
 
Well neither tape or drives are great for long term archives. There is no long term digital storage format yet. The best bet for long term archive now is YCM separations, but while that is fine for a final locked film, not practical for the original source.

So it's up to the content owners to migrate their data to newer backup media in a timely intervals. Of course it all depends on how long they want to keep that going.

We'll see where the future of long term digital archive ends up, it should be interesting.
 
I'm very dubious about the suitability of drives for term storage. Simply from a design perspective.

Drives are designed for ongoing or frequent operation. They are not designed to remain unused for a long period.

Tapes on the other hand are designed for archival purposes and are recognised standards in the IT industry. LTO is a forward planned format with designed backward compatability. The LTO standard has a defined roadmap for at least the next 5 years, and will likely continue beyond that. The format has been widely adopted at many levels - and the damand for drives to read LTO tapes will exist for a long time.

I think sticking drives on a shelf is a good idea for security during post production, and there's probably no harm keeping them even longer, but I wouldn't want to pin my hopes on them.
 
I was referring to the unacceptable quality of the quicktimes files... In regards to scratch, it's not Scratches problem. It's nvidia's. Things like no embedded AES audio, no real workflow. It can be a great tool set but well, unless we want to give up a lot of the strengths of oh using timecode to track elements, it can get real tricky.
 
Jeff Brue said:
in regards to the 600A be careful its a hardware based proprietary system. IE meaning I can't go to the website pay the 150 bucks to Dantz or Bru to get the data off of your tapes when you've sold the project and need to go through final layoff and QC.
Click to expand...

So if I use a 600a to create LTO3 backups of my footage and drop them off to you Jeff you won't be able to access them? I thought LTO3 was a standard or is it just the tape that is standard and the data is unique to whatever program you use to write to it?
 
That's right Evin. You can only play A series tapes on other A series tape drives. The tapes are standard, but the file formats aren't. (Not between A series and non A series drives anyway)
 
That's right, no way to access them without a 600A drive. Again if there are enough people who buy into the technology its not an issue, ie evin you tell me I'm going to get a DI if I buy one of those drives I'll do it ;-).

It sounds like if what Off is proposing works, I don't think it'll be an issue, we're not talking HDCAM-SR prices here. We're just talking modern SAN architecture and a new cheap drive.
 
I just got a lead on an external Quantum half height LTO-3 drive that uses SAS. This will make hookup to notebooks for field transfer very easy. Pricing will be around $1800. Send me an email and I'll send the PDF spec sheet.
 
Matthew,

It is. I don't have any final pricing or what it includes. I deal with a company called Chi Corporation and they have always agressively beaten any pricing I find so I will be sure to pass along your link. I just asked them if they knew any SAS solutions and they fired me back an email with the PDF. Pricing I mentioned was based on a quick call and they said "around $1800".

I'll update here accurate $$ after I do a bit of negotiation on Monday.

Thanks for the link.

Jim
 
Another quick update. I know that Chi Corp will give us great pricing and a number of you have expressed interest in this drive. I'll see what I can do and keep you posted. I'll also see what kind of price we can get on media.

With this drive and an ESATA card for your notebook you should be able to backup files in the field.

Jim
 
Jim Logan said:
With this drive and an ESATA card for your notebook you should be able to backup files in the field.
Click to expand...

Hmmm.... Not so sure about that. I tried connecting a Dell LTO-4 HH SAS to an eSATA interface and got nothing. The Dell units are Quantum drives. Not all SAS devices are capable of talking to SATA interfaces / HBAs.

Anyway, if the Quantum LTO-3 HH SAS unit can connect to an eSATA interface, then I'd definitely be down for one, maybe two of them.
 
After spending a bit of time reading specs I think Jeff is right so the better bet would be the SCSI configuration. It is the same drive with a different connector on the back.

But I still want to verify because I was fairly specific in my request to Chi.

Jeff what are your thoughts? Will work on figuring this out.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
Hmmm.... Not so sure about that. I tried connecting a Dell LTO-4 HH SAS to an eSATA interface and got nothing. The Dell units are Quantum drives. Not all SAS devices are capable of talking to SATA interfaces / HBAs.

Anyway, if the Quantum LTO-3 HH SAS unit can connect to an eSATA interface, then I'd definitely be down for one, maybe two of them.
Click to expand...

Jeff, was the eSATA a card like the RocketRAID, or was it an interface card for a laptop? I don't know about Jim, but I want to hook the drive upto my MacPro through a RocketRaid card.

Matthew
 
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