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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 :)

Mini dv as data backup ?

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Harva Raj

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as i scouting for productivity apps for my mac ... i found THIS, (coolatoola) a app to backup data files to mini dv. my question is , how good/ how save is this idea for backing up your data (pictures, music, non production data) on mini dv?
 
MiniDV as data backup

MiniDV as data backup

I've seen such programs for some years (on PC, rather than Mac) but have not tried it. I haven't heard especially good things about the idea in general. The problem being the MiniDV system is designed to work well enough for video, with the presumption that small amounts of uncorrected errors occasionally getting through won't be noticed much. DV has some built-in error correction but it isn't as robust as systems designed for data backup, in my opinion.

Maybe it would work acceptably well if the program adds its own layer of redundancy and error-correction codes.
 
Sort of good, but not great.
25 Mbit/s you get 11BG into one $4 DV tape. It also take 1h to download.
..and 5.5GB if you have error protection. (recomended or ALL data can be toast of you have one error)

for $1 you get 4.7 GB on DVD, that take 10 min to burn, so it is not a magical deal.
 
Janne is right on the money with this one. Also, don't forget that you will be locked into proprietary software and data format written to these tapes with a very obscure method of archival. No industry standard, or even industry-accepted, method of retrieving this data a few years from now if the software is no longer available and you have tossed your copy away. Not to mention that miniDV camcorders will probably vanish from the market entirely within the next 2 years.

Seriously, use LTO for tape backup. Period. End of discussion. It is the cheapest form of backup / archival out there right now and very reliable. The down-side to LTO is the somewhat high buy-in cost ($2400 for LTO-4 and good software), if you are an independent. But if you are shooting RED on a regular basis and have stuff to archive, there isn't really a better choice, IMO. At about the 25TB mark, LTO-4 becomes cheaper per GB than hard drives, and that's even with current HDD prices at $145 for a 1.5TB, assuming you buy tapes in bulk packs for a discount ~$60 for LTO-4 tape, ~$26 for LTO-3 tape.
 
What has been said here is very true, and especially the fact that the tapes are only 11MB and take an hour to write. Think about that - an hour to backup what you can shoot on a red in less than 10 :)

Also, most of the software out there isn't very good. DVDs, hard drives, and LTO tapes are much better options.
 
JanneJansson said:
Sort of good, but not great.
25 Mbit/s you get 11GB into one $4 DV tape. It also take 1h to download.
..and 5.5GB if you have error protection. (recomended or ALL data can be toast of you have one error)

for $1 you get 4.7 GB on DVD, that take 10 min to burn, so it is not a magical deal.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info.

i not against DVD or LTO tapes really. i work more on audio (industry) and i tend to get files as large as 10GB per file. hard drives are cheap but having 3 dead hard drives (40GB,80GB and 160 GB recently) other options for backup seems a must. DVD's are out of question and i have a imac so LTO is out too :sad:

anyway, does blu ray has a 4GB limit?
 
Blu-ray is much more (12GB?), but any disc-based media is unstable and not suitable for backup any longer than a year.
 
Hard drives are a terrible solution for archival, yet people continue to use them because they are cheap and easily available. Hard drives are not designed for long-term storage or to store data while sitting on a shelf. No drive manufacturer actually promotes their drives for use as a data archival method. Many consumer drive products are promoted as a means to "back up" your data, mostly external units, and wrongly so.

Why is LTO out of the question on a Mac? I run LTO-4 on my Macs just fine. Lots of info on it here on the forums. Since moving to LTO-4 a few months ago, I've archived about 8TB of data onto LTO-4 from my Mac systems.

DVD and Blu-Ray are ok for data backup, but they don't make a lot of sense to me for any serious backup regiments as the cost per GB is rather high compared to LTO or hard drive. Optical disc is also slow. But if you don't back up that much on a regular basis, it may not be a bad way to go until a move to something like LTO becomes a more realistic option. The biggest stumbling block I see with most independent professionals and even small shops is they don't want to consider LTO because they can't see past the initial investment of the tape drive.

DVD is 4.7GB per layer... So a DVD9 (dual layer) isn't big enough for your needs. As mentioned above by Janne, a good backup solution will use additional error correction data and your backup size will be larger than the actual data being stored. You can use compression on your original data and potentially again through the backup process to help shrink this a bit. If you're talking uncompressed audio files, it's probably best to ZIP them up before archiving to buy some more space.

Blu-Ray holds up to 25GB per layer, so 50GB per disc side currently. There is no 4GB limit or 2GB limit per file as you get with MS-DOS FAT filesystems.
 
The SUN StorageTek LTO3 and 4's are great, good price, solid support, and work well with the Mac

Ron
 
I'm using the Quantum LTO-4 HH desktop SAS unit with BRU LE backup software. I was using Retrospect 6.1 as my software to start, but now that I have BRU working, I dumped Retro... 'cuz it sucks.

The HP drives are also nice ones to look at. However, for the Mac, don't buy them with a HBA from HP. You will need to get a different SAS (recommended) or SCSI HBA elsewhere that will work with the drive on the Mac. I recommend the ATTO cards for use with the HP drives.

On OSX, there is no direct tape support from Apple. It's up to third parties to create support for these tape drives and controller combinations in their software. It seems that Most SCSI + LTO-3 combinations are universally supported, LTO-4 is still seeing some growing pains on the Mac. My Quantum + LSI controller card that came with it, work just fine on Retrospect and BRU. However, this combination still does not play nice with ATempo.

Tandberg / Exabyte tape drives (usually with ATTO or Areca HBAs) are supported under OSX with ATempo software. The Magnum autoloaders are great if you're looking to do larger backups and not be present to shuffle through a number of tapes.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
Why is LTO out of the question on a Mac? I run LTO-4 on my Macs just fine. Lots of info on it here on the forums. Since moving to LTO-4 a few months ago, I've archived about 8TB of data onto LTO-4 from my Mac systems.
Click to expand...

Jeff, he said iMac, not just Mac... I think this is the lack of expansion slot that concerns him. However, correct me if I'm wrong but there's Gigabit Ethernet LTO solution out-there, no?
 
Ooops. I didn't catch the imac part, my brain just processed "Mac". Yeah, that would make it difficult.

As for Ethernet LTO options, the only one out there right now is Quantum's LTO-3A. Some people rave over it. I personally couldn't stand it. After attempting to actually use a demo unit, I just couldn't see how anyone could actually justify it. Terribly slow compared to a proper LTO-3 (let alone, LTO-4) connected via SCSI or SAS. Terrible FTP server appliance, many basic FTP functions just not even implemented and the JAVA interface applet isn't anything spectacular. Not to mention that many common FTP client softwares like CuteFTP and CyberDuck don't like to talk to the thing... Then there's price. I can buy two LTO-4 SAS drives with HBAs and BRU software, plus a box of 50 LTO-4 tapes, for the same price as a single LTO-3A drive.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
As for Ethernet LTO options, the only one out there right now is Quantum's LTO-3A. Some people rave over it. I personally couldn't stand it. After attempting to actually use a demo unit, I just couldn't see how anyone could actually justify it. Terribly slow compared to a proper LTO-3 (let alone, LTO-4) connected via SCSI or SAS. Terrible FTP server appliance, many basic FTP functions just not even implemented and the JAVA interface applet isn't anything spectacular. Not to mention that many common FTP client softwares like CuteFTP and CyberDuck don't like to talk to the thing... Then there's price. I can buy two LTO-4 SAS drives with HBAs and BRU software, plus a box of 50 LTO-4 tapes, for the same price as a single LTO-3A drive.
Click to expand...

I totally get what you're saying, but that's still an option, regardless of how practical it actually is.
 
also look at HP DAT over USB for iMAC

also look at HP DAT over USB for iMAC

Jeff Kilgroe said:
Ooops. I didn't catch the imac part, my brain just processed "Mac". Yeah, that would make it difficult.

As for Ethernet LTO options, the only one out there right now is Quantum's LTO-3A. Some people rave over it. I personally couldn't stand it. After attempting to actually use a demo unit, I just couldn't see how anyone could actually justify it. Terribly slow compared to a proper LTO-3 (let alone, LTO-4) connected via SCSI or SAS. Terrible FTP server appliance, many basic FTP functions just not even implemented and the JAVA interface applet isn't anything spectacular. Not to mention that many common FTP client softwares like CuteFTP and CyberDuck don't like to talk to the thing... Then there's price. I can buy two LTO-4 SAS drives with HBAs and BRU software, plus a box of 50 LTO-4 tapes, for the same price as a single LTO-3A drive.
Click to expand...

YAy JEff.. here's to that.

Another iMAC option is to check out the line of HP DAT (yes digital audio tapes) from HP. THese are all USB based at USB2 speeds. Don't believe the b/s myths about DAT as a data medium . It is very good and highly reliable. USed by many financial SME's and small one man post companies.

Work fine on a iMAC with OSX 10.5.x

Make sure you have some MAC OSX based archive.app software such as that JEff mentioned such as BRU-LE or BRU-PE (currently in BETA) from Tolisgroup or similar (but not retrospect)

THEse DAT drives and media are rather low priced as the general data tape drives go and also the media is quite priced,. data specs at the HP website I guess.

I agree with JEff Kilgroe in that the notion of using LTO3A (Quantum et all) is definately not the way to go.. extremely slow compared to the LTO ULTRIUM counterparts, not compatible (exchange wi thes drives and so).. As usual its always a business decision for what work for you. Many do like the LTO3A and ye olde SDLT600 tape drives with their TCP/IP based interface.

suggest search these forums and others for current information on using LTO4 ULTRIUM data tape drives for archive. and all the bits and pieces you need. Again HP DAT is a cheap option.

fwiw

w
HK
 
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