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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 :)

Backup and Tape device answers

Tim Jones said:
Anyone that simply puts data onto a disk of ANY sort and then stores it in hopes of 20 year recovery might as well make sure they have a good exit strategy when the disks refuse to spin up :smiley:
Click to expand...

The Stanford study says exactly that... 2,5" mobile drives will spin up in at least 30 years time because of the way the park heads and spin system is being designed...

SATA interface I thing it will be around for the next 20 years, but yes I agree that you have to immigrate the data every time that a new technology is coming into the light... but I think this, applies also to the tape...

Tim Jones said:
If you're going to use disk for archival, make sure that it's configured on your system so that it ABSOLUTELY CAN'T be used as normal storage.
Click to expand...

I suppose that you mean that someone out of your control could erase the disks? so to be formated to an unknown FS will protect from that?
 
A disk by any other name...

A disk by any other name...

Evangelos Achillopoulos said:
If you're going to use disk for archival, make sure that it's configured on your system so that it ABSOLUTELY CAN'T be used as normal storage.
Click to expand...
I suppose that you mean that someone out of your control could erase the disks? so to be formated to an unknown FS will protect from that?
Click to expand...
Actually I mean that if users can see and access the drive that you are using for archival, there is a very high probability that they will use it as a normal disk, rather than as your archive destination. The result is the disk that you had so hopefully assigned for archiving will end up in daily use making your archive process unpredictable.

Here's a bit of history...

Back in 1989/90, Maynard Electronics (the retail side of Archive Corp) partnered with Maxoptics to produce a 2GB magneto-optical read write drive assembly. The idea was to provide a removable, 1GB/side backup device (disk drives topped out at 310MB at that time). However, to make the volumes writable on Netware systems, the drivers exposed the platter as a system drive. Imagine the joy on system users' faces when they discovered that their G: drive was 1GB in size :ohmy:.

The result was the drives ended up being used to store user data and the backup process ended up being circumvented since the disk space was more important to day-to-day operations than backup. The moral of the story - if a user can use the drive for normal storage, they will and it will not be used for archival / backup.
 
If I was to start backing up using 500gb laptop drives (while I wait for my tape system) what would the process be for moving the archive over to tape. And will doubler work with Harddrives.
 
Evangelos Achillopoulos said:
Tim, I noticed that you don't comment about the study of Stanford and I found that my link was broken...

So this is the correct one...

http://lockss.stanford.edu/locksswiki/files/ISandT2008.pdf

So please tell me your opinion...
Click to expand...

Sorry that I wasn't clear in the original post - the Stanford folks are pretty well on the mark and I agree that the SATA 2.5" drives are very reliable (in fact, the first SAS drives were also 2.5").

My only issue is that the sponsor of the paper seems to be a company that specializes in disk-based storage. Always take a cynical approach :undecided: to these "papers" when you see a company name attached to them. Remember, data is what the presenter wants it to be. In this case, the results seem to be tied to the sale of Tandberg Data's RDX drives as backup. While I like the RDX design and solution, the price per GB should be weighed into your storage plans. The price to "get in" is almost as high as an LTO-2 tape drive and the LTO-2 media has a higher capacity per tape and a much lower dollar per GB price.

Back in my days at Archive Corp, we gave DAT tapes a life expectancy of 10-12 years of normal use based on "accelerated life testing methods", but I've got a few DDS-1, 60M tapes that are over 18 years old and still retaining their data and my use if far above "average" use. The testing premise at Archive for the DAT technology was to position it for short-life, near-line storage while Quarter Inch (QIC) drives would be used for long term, offline storage. The result is that the DAT technology got the shorter life expectancy. Give 2 statisticians the same data with different guidance and you will get two different results.

I also recommend that ytou take a long hard look at the data sources when the conclusions include words like "should", "hope", and "99%" in the actual conclusion statements.

That's why I only mentioned refreshing and watching for storage usurpers.

Tim
 
Hi Everyone,

Thanks a lot for all the precious info...
I am about to buy a whole LTO4 kit to backup/archive my RED projects.

Here is the gear I am going for:
http://cgi.ebay.fr/HP-EH920A-Extern...C_Drives_Storage_Internal?hash=item230368cb24
http://www.provantage.com/atto-technology-esas-h380-000~7ATTO04C.htm
http://www.provantage.com/3ware-cbl-sff8088sas-10m~73WA9005.htm
http://www.provantage.com/maxell-183906lp~7MAXL1J3.htm

Can anyone confirm to me I am not doing anything wrong?
I will be using this set on a vista PC (asus P5Q) and plan for this to be compatible with a mac pro if I buy one later...

Would that work?
 
Hey Tim-
I was wondering if you all offer a student discount on BRU PE. I saw the student bundles on your site, but I couldn't find if there was an academic deal for just the software itself. Any plans for that? Thanks!
Peace,

-Harry
 
C.K. said:
Hi Everyone,

Thanks a lot for all the precious info...
I am about to buy a whole LTO4 kit to backup/archive my RED projects.

Here is the gear I am going for:
Click to expand...

Looks good. If you are doing this with an '09 Mac Pro or other system that has PCIe 2.0 slots, you should consider the ATTO H680 adapter instead of the H380 as it is PCIe 2.0 compliant and will give you double the bandwidth at the controller interface when installed in a 2.0 slot. Additionally it also supports SAS and SATA-III 6Gbps modes.

A real handy addition to the kit is the HighPoint mini-SAS to eSATA fan out cable. It lets you convert one of those SAS ports on the rear of that card to 4 eSATA ports. Be sure to get the eSATA version and not the standard SATA version. Both are the same cable, but the eSATA version has the extra eSATA ground shield on the connectors.

Oh, you may want to consider a longer SAS cable too, depending on where you intend to set your tape drive. And be aware that the fan in the tape unit is louder than it needs to be by several orders of magnitude. Both HP and Quantum desktop units are this way and I don't understand why when this is intended to be a desktop unit. I just turn the drive on when I want to use it, so it's not a deal breaker, but as soon as the warranty runs out, I'm yanking the fan out and putting in a decent one.
 
thanks a lot, Jeff...
Very appreciated!
 
I'm hooking up the HP 1760 to a Mac Pro octocore and can't find mac os drivers anywhere.

Help :blush:
 
paul engstrom said:
I'm hooking up the HP 1760 to a Mac Pro octocore and can't find mac os drivers anywhere.
Click to expand...

Drivers do not exist, nor are they needed. The drive is supported through software like BRU, Retrospect, etc..
 
thanks Jeff,

just found your answer to this question in another part of the forum a couple months ago.

this forum is just brilliant.

wow.

p
 
Alright, I've got another LTO question for those who are still with me.
How do you deal with a catalog of your backups? Does BRU PE keep a searchable database of files and folders that it has backed up? (Sorry, haven't actually used the software yet) Do you keep a simple text document with tape numbers? A FileMaker database? I'd love some insight on this, as I'm starting to realize how difficult it could be to recall which tiny file is on which 800GB tape... Thanks!
Peace,

-Harry
 
Backup and Tape device answers

I have an HP storage server with 12TB of storage, a fw800 card in it and an LTO-4 tape library. I want to back up red drives to it, and burn them off to tape. What's the best software to do the backup to tape? ntbackup? What's most commonly used?

Thanks,
Paul
 
Harry Lipnick said:
Alright, I've got another LTO question for those who are still with me.
How do you deal with a catalog of your backups? Does BRU PE keep a searchable database of files and folders that it has backed up? (Sorry, haven't actually used the software yet) Do you keep a simple text document with tape numbers? A FileMaker database? I'd love some insight on this, as I'm starting to realize how difficult it could be to recall which tiny file is on which 800GB tape... Thanks!
Peace,

-Harry
Click to expand...

BRU PE will keep a list of the files in each backup, and you can restore individual ones. I don't think this is searchable, but it's possible that it's something that i overlooked.

we archive by project, so we just keep a simple spreadsheet of what projects are on what tapes.
 
Harry Lipnick said:
Anyone?
Bueller?

I know I'm being impatient....sorry :D
Peace,

-Harry
Click to expand...

Um, he's sick. My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it's pretty serious.
 
brandon thomas said:
Um, he's sick. My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it's pretty serious.
Click to expand...

:thumbsup:

Thanks for the BRU info too.
Peace,

-Harry
 
I have an HP storage server with 12TB of storage, a fw800 card in it and an LTO-4 tape library. I want to back up red drives to it, and burn them off to tape. What's the best software to do the backup to tape? ntbackup? What's most commonly used?

Thanks,
Paul
 
I would love some advice about setting up Bru Server and LTO4 to work properly...

Had some big issues to start off with, to get the LTO4 running properly. I did get a bit annoyed with Bru tech support unfairly. They did help me through a lot of testing to get it to work. But as a Mac user, I've not often had to run unix shell scripts to get software / hardware to work. It did get VERY complicated indeed. Even for my techy friend who was helping me on it, and he writes software for a living.

I was getting super-slow read and write speeds. Turns out it was two faulty scsi cables in a row. (if you get slow speeds on SCSI, check that it hasn't reverted to being a single-ended bus as speed drops to 10-15 mb/s)... Anyhoo...

Have now backed up a lot of data using Bru Server but have found it VERY confusing. Lots of things that make the console hang, needing a force quit. Some things in the console that don't quite work. Still haven't done a scheduled backup.

And can't access some of the backups I've made. For some reason, it lists some of my backups as being made from a 'ghost' copy of my server, so the console hangs if I try to open the backup file. So not sure exactly how I'll get these files back.....

And then told I need to take out a tech support contract to go any further.....

As someone who has built raid drives, installed networks and basically done a lot of putting together edit suites, trying to put in an LTO4 drive has been the single most complicated thing I've had to deal with. I'm not entirely sure why. Surely it's just sticking data on a tape?

We decided to go for Bru over Retrospect after looking on this forum, but not sure we did the right thing. The question is, do we upgrade and hope the v2.02 is more stable? Or go for something like Presstore, which was recommended to us?

Big advice I would give anyone wanting to get into LTO4. Get a reseller to install it for you, and save yourselves a lot of time.....
 
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