Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Register Log in
  • 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 :)

HP DAT as a backup alternative to LTO

J Davis

J Davis

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 22, 2008
Messages
1,267
Reaction score
0
Points
0
Location
NYC
The initial investment on LTO-3 or 4 is not justifiable in my case as I don't generate
that much to back up. So far I have about 400 gig to archive and DVD's are too small.

HP DAT seems like a good solution. Can anyone share first hand experiences on this?

Here are a few links I found after a quick search

link to HP website

link to Google product search

Not wanting to hijack another thread, here is original post by warickt on HP DAT.
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showpost.php?p=360348&postcount=15
 
DAT is fine by quite small in terms of capacity. There are a few used LTO3's around.
 
J Davis said:
The initial investment on LTO-3 or 4 is not justifiable in my case as I don't generate
that much to back up. So far I have about 400 gig to archive and DVD's are too small.

HP DAT seems like a good solution. Can anyone share first hand experiences on this?

Here are a few links I found after a quick search

link to HP website

link to Google product search

Not wanting to hijack another thread, here is original post by warickt on HP DAT.
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showpost.php?p=360348&postcount=15
Click to expand...

cool topic for a thread.

Agree with previous poster. The DAT media are cheap and very reliable but the data rates are limited to USB and the capacities are not large however they are an excellent archive/recall medium/carrier.

Check out HP's site. THe HP guys have buried it under STORAGE I recall.

As several of us on this forum that are using MACPRO's and other towers we are usiing LTO4 ULTRIUM tape drives. This doesn't help you though.

LTO3's will also require some kind of HBA (host buss adapter) whether SAS, FC or SCSI so for I recall your(??) original post that wont do, hence the notion of HP DAT.

I would NOT recommend you even bother with QUantum LTO3A.. yes they are cool for an TCP/IP interface over IPoE but these are slow and as many have stated have compataibilty issue swith other LTO drives (such asathey ARE NOT compatable), issues with proprietary ecapsulation and are very very slow . Jeff Kilgroe posted an informatve item about their FTP implementation with which I would concur. so dont go there unless youhave no need to share you stuff, dont care about the lousy speed and have a large wallet.

I think you can get into these rather cheaply and as far as an archive/recall applications for a MACBOOK , a MACBOOKPRO or even an older MAC POWERBOOK, I would suggest again Tolisgroups BRU-PE (when it is availale soon) or just g get a demo of BRU-LE its woks fine on intel MACS too. http://www.tolisgroup.com

You can get an idea of what BRU can do.

See if you can get into one of the dat tape drives and source the media and post some results.

I don't have one available for me however its worth a look for a cost effective approach that doesn't use spinning disk..

Additionally and a far worse option is to maybe look at AIT format. THese unfortunately have higher capacities (same interfaces) but are far less reliable. A real shame for SONY but they just never took off (liek ther SAIT big brother(s)). I'm glad my bank accounts are not maintained as backups on AIT. else I thin I would be less well off after an outage froma bank!.. Others will report their experiences ofcourse. lol anyway..

MAybe as a thought you could contact Tolisgroup and ask them what they think. I think they have a lots of customers with these HP DAT tape drives and MACs and also their engineering labs I imagine.. just a thought. They are very very good and wont muck you around with nonsense...

check them all out.

hth

warwick
HK
 
USB DAT available!

USB DAT available!

One important thing to keep in mind also is that HP offers its DAT24, DAT40, DAT72, and DAT160 in USB formats. This means that you can have tape backup on your PowerBook/iBook/iMac/Mac Book/Mac Book Pro even though you can't add an HBA.

We use all four of those devices in our testing with BRU on Mac, Linux and FreeBSD and they work fabulously (if a bit slow compared to LTO-4 :wink: ) and they are relatively inexpensive.

Unless you already have an investment in DDS-2 or DDS3, I'd recommend the DAT160 since you get 80GB native per tape, it will read and write DDS-4 and DAT72 tapes (cheaper media until you need the higher capacity), and it can be had for around US$1,000.

Hope that give folks a bit more info on the HP DAT situation.

Tim
 
Tim! Nice to have a backup specialist on the forum!

How does compression work on these HP DAT drives? They are 160 GB and can compresss data 2:1? How? No matter what kind of material?

I remember having read somewhere that using the compressed option on LTO is not recommended for video files?

Please enlighten me.

Cheers,
Fredrik
 
Fredrik Harreschou said:
How does compression work on these HP DAT drives? They are 160 GB and can compress data 2:1? How? No matter what kind of material?

I remember having read somewhere that using the compressed option on LTO is not recommended for video files?
Click to expand...

Hi Fredrik,

Thanks for the welcome.

As for compression, most modern tape drives use an algorithm called ALDC (adaptive lossless data compression) or similar (Sony's is different). What this means is that the compressor in the tape drive monitors the data flowing in and will adjust itself when data is non-compressible. Because of this, unlike what some are saying, it's safe to leave your hardware compression alone as it will recognize your data stream and operate in the proper mode (on or off) at no cost to either your data throughput or native (non-compressed) tape capacity.

For the work that we all do in the entertainment media industry, the data created, unlike word processing or spreadsheet docs, has already been compressed by the software/hardware we use, so further compression when writing to tape is not going to happen. Therefore, when you read about drive capacities, it's safest to chop the numbers provided in half (except for Sony AIT, they claim 2.6:1...). Therefore, for the predominant formats:

DAT24 - 12GB Native
DAT40 - 20GB Native
DAT72 - 36GB Native
DAT160 - 80GB Native
DLT80 - 40GB Native
LTO-1 - 100GB Native
LTO-2 - 200GB Native
LTO-3 - 400GB Native
LTO-4 - 800GB Native​

A really good online resource is at:

TapeStock Online

Additionally, a lot of people spread stories about the horrors of failed tape restores. To this I say "Check your software." In 24 years of working with tape hardware, I've hardly ever seen a tape failure that wasn't the fault of software that didn't properly write the data stream to the tape in the first place. Of course, there's always that tape that was left on the dash of your car in the Phoenix Summer or the one returned by FEDEX after they ran over it with the forklift on the loading dock, but for the most part, tapes are actually more reliable than disk. In fact, LTO media is expected to have a shelf life of over 100 years when properly stored. Remember, tape drives are dumb devices in that they only write what your backup software send them.

I have a QIC-150 (quarter inch) tape (150MB) that was written in 1998 and a DDS 1 (60M, 1.3GB) tapes that I can still restore data from today (they are part of our backward compatibility testing).

HTH,
Tim
 
Here's an update.
I finally got to speak to an HP rep. HP DAT is only for the PC and they have no option for mac users.
Sad news.
 
Thanks for the valuable information. I am using different backup methods and haven't found the ultimate backup yet. I use DAT drives as well as software and external drives. But there are plenty of different backup possibilites. When you have smaller amounts of data to store, free online backup services can be found here - an interesting option since you can store up to 1GB at certain sites. The choice of method also depends on the type of data and the needs of the user.
 
not so - HP DAT tape drive USB works fine with MACPRO -

not so - HP DAT tape drive USB works fine with MACPRO -

J Davis said:
Here's an update.
I finally got to speak to an HP rep. HP DAT is only for the PC and they have no option for mac users.
Sad news.
Click to expand...

Hi J, not so in the slightest.. I believe that that HP guy doesn't really know. HP are getting savy about Apple stuff thankfully.

The reason is that HP media and ent., and hp storageworks guys were in force at the LAFCPUG Supermeet at the RIO at NAB2009 last week and had a demo of desk showing the HP DAT tape drive and the HP Ultrium LTO4 tape drive (SAS) with two brand new Nehalem Macpros 2009. They were partnering with Tolisgroup.

Software was BRU-PE from Tolis.

worth contacting Tolisgroup for details. (mr Tim Jones)

works great!
hth
w
 
We are approaching the end of our second Red project (a long form PBS documentary) and we are now thinking over these archival issues. We have regular income from the sale of stock footage from previous programs, and we often use footage from previous programs as source material on new shows, so having access to our past HD material is important.

I wondered if it made sense to just lay the 1080 Pro-res footage that we want to keep back onto HDcam tape and keep track of the footage that way.

This method means there is no tape restore process and the management of archival material is the same as it has been--keep the tapes organized and have a good log. This assumes that you have an HDcam deck (quite a bit more expensive than an LTO 4 system) and of course there is the editors time in doing the laybacks to tape.

Any reaction to this thought?

Thanks

Rob Gardner
 
warwickt said:
Hi J, not so in the slightest.. I believe that that HP guy doesn't really know. HP are getting savy about Apple stuff thankfully.

The reason is that HP media and ent., and hp storageworks guys were in force at the LAFCPUG Supermeet at the RIO at NAB2009 last week and had a demo of desk showing the HP DAT tape drive and the HP Ultrium LTO4 tape drive (SAS) with two brand new Nehalem Macpros 2009. They were partnering with Tolisgroup.

Software was BRU-PE from Tolis.

worth contacting Tolisgroup for details. (mr Tim Jones)

works great!
hth
w
Click to expand...

Wow, thank you! I had given up on this because of what the rep told me.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top