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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?

No matter what format you choose for backup or archival of your data -- *always* *ALWAYS* !!ALWAYS!! make more than one copy! Don't store all your copies at the same location.

A spare drive isn't a bad suggestion either. Because what happens when you suddenly need some data off a backup. Your tape drive eats copy#1 and you need a new drive for tape #2, but it's 5:30pm on Friday, the two local shops you call don't have one, but can get you one in a few days, etc..

Be careful with backup software, even Retrospect. I recommend always using something standard across any platform. Unix tarball or zip are great.

Edit> Oh yeah... If you're backing up to hard drives that you will pack up and store on a shelf. You might want to make 3 [or more] copies or structure your drives as RAID 5 / 6 sets in case one drive fails. Still have more than one archival copy.
 
I'm very very happy to say we haven't lost a frame in POST. Mostly due to that two copy strategy. Now there has been the guy who wiped something out on set but luckily he caught it before he wrote over more than 2 minutes of footage. We recovered it (linux is great for that). Sadly Fat32 which is what the CF cards write to is not.

For storage formats I still like LTO-3 the best its cheap to make duplicates. We have the scalar 24's which have a command with linux tarmaps to set it and forget it to make a dupe. LTO-4 is great just a bit expensive at the moment, in either case I really like IBM's roadmap for LTO. I like the fact that I'll be able to in 2017 insert an LTO3 tape into an LTO6 machine. Lastly even now I put in a 3 year old LTO3 tape and its fine. Also I will say this about LTO-3 when one does go bad if you're using linux tarmaps you'll live because only a section of the tape goes bad and thats just one chunk of a tar. You can fast forward and get the rest of the data off the tape, then just go back to the secondary set to get that one bad tarmap.

We're getting ready to announce an automated Red footage LTO linux backup system, ie you'll be able to drop off your hard drive full of red footage and have it written to LTO over night (two copies). The big thing that eventually I'll hope to get with this forum is some kind of set of standardized practices for this kind of a service.


Also one of the things that helps producers understand it is that Bank of America and Google use it.
 
Dave said:
Just finished testing an LTO-3 tape back up on my old G4.

Back in the days of Cinewave and ultra3 scsi, I spent a small fortune building a terabyte RAID system. I thought, why not revive the old beast as a back-up station. So I dusted off my old ATTO UL3D and SCSI cables, ordered a bare quantum LTO drive(about $1600) and a scsi-3 enclosure with terminator (about $90). Hooked everything up, loaded the ATTO drivers and everything runs well(10.5 Leopard). I used Retrospect Desktop Edition and tested another product. Both work well so far.
Click to expand...

Which drive exactly did you buy (link?) and what case did you buy (link?)

Thanks,

Matthew
 
Would like to get some opinions from all of you on LTO backup in the field. We spend quite a bit of time on the road and need a wayto get the footage off the drives and CF cards.

We're thinking about putting together a package that has an IBM LTO4 drive along with a Lenovo dual core notebook AND a docking station that has an ULTRA SCSI 320 card in the PXI Express slot. This would all fit nicely into a Pelican along with tape stock. We've been doing quite a bit of research and think this should be a good way to go. Thoughts from any of you would be appreciated.

Also wondering how well this will work with Red Cine. Notebook would be Thinkpad with Intel® Core™ 2 Duo processor T7800 (2.6GHz 800MHz 4MBL2), NVIDIA Quadro FX 570M (256MB Open GL), 15.4 WUXGA screen and 4 gig RAM.
 
I just got an LTO-3 Ultrium 960. Not a LTO-3A. Have a PowerPC G5 2.5GHz. a SATA RAID 0 array that in disk tests reads out at 160 to 200 MBs. and an ATTO UL4D scsi card. HOWEVER, can't get the backup to go faster than about 2MBps. This is apparently a more common problem than one would think, having to do with feeding the LTO drive enough bandwidth to keep it from shoeshining (rewinding and waiting for enough data). It likes a lot of data. Tried BRU LE and Retrospect Desktop and both have the same performance. Anyone have a clue?
 
Rich Malmberg said:
I just got an LTO-3 Ultrium 960. Not a LTO-3A. Have a PowerPC G5 2.5GHz. a SATA RAID 0 array that in disk tests reads out at 160 to 200 MBs. and an ATTO UL4D scsi card. HOWEVER, can't get the backup to go faster than about 2MBps. This is apparently a more common problem than one would think, having to do with feeding the LTO drive enough bandwidth to keep it from shoeshining (rewinding and waiting for enough data). It likes a lot of data. Tried BRU LE and Retrospect Desktop and both have the same performance. Anyone have a clue?
Click to expand...

Could it have anything to do with the enclosure you bought?

Matthew
 
Could be improper SCSI configuration or termination. Bad cable connection, etc.. 2MB/s isn't a problem with your drives keeping up.
 
Just keep in mind that FireWire drives are probably the worst solution and have the highest drive failures for long term storage/archive.

Michael
 
FWIW LTO-3 are the archive method used by the Dalsa system which I suppose is a good endorsement... They clearly face the same problems with their workflow and data storage.
 
well ... assuming we complete and release the application we are building - if you have a LTO3 - A Series drive from Quantum - you can do an "automated" pull of just the RDC files used in your cut from your LTO3s ...
 
I'm just waiting for command line support, to automate the entire thing and just have conformed DPX's magically appear in DI.

But back to LTO-3 or 4. It scares me the amount of people keeping this material on firewire drives... I've just had far too many go down, we keep around 30 of them here to ship out editorial dailies and whatnot. We average a failure once a month of some sort. It just happens and before you know it enjoy your 900 dollar bill for Belle Aire to ship your material in 7 hours from LA to New York, because a producer for a Super Bowl commercial is yelling at you. Imagine that producer when they loose footage.

Also even though the Red has made it far easier to approach clients with File based workflows, ultimately a corrupt file is gone. It doesn't just show up as a digital hit on a video tape.
 
I just got the confirmation from Quantum that LTO-3 and 3A are incompatible. Neither one can read the tapes of the other.

The fact that you can just dump your R3D files to tape, edit on a DV downconvert and relink to the original media in the end with the LTO-3A is very cool. But is it worth three times the price of the LTO-3? I would say so.

It's still only a fifth of a Digi Beta deck. ;-)
 
The features of the LTO-3A may be able to be reproduced in client-side software with standard LTO-3 also. Although I'm speculating on that that as I haven't got either to test.
 
In regards to the 3A. I'd highly reccommend against that then. Most facilities won't blink an eyelid when told they only have to pay $120 for retrospect or a little less for Bru. But really anything other than that... you'll be shipping your LTO-3A to whoever your online house is.
 
Jeff Brue said:
In regards to the 3A. I'd highly reccommend against that then. Most facilities won't blink an eyelid when told they only have to pay $120 for retrospect or a little less for Bru. But really anything other than that... you'll be shipping your LTO-3A to whoever your online house is.
Click to expand...

A good number of facilities that use LTO and other tape systems are using Tar. It's a throw back to the Unix days, but it's free and works. The tricky thing is that Tar on Unix, Linux and Tar emulation software don't always have the same drivers or read in data optimally depending on how it's written.

If you're only use the LTO drive for internal use and restore the data to a bunch of Firewire 800 drives to give to a post house, that can make life easier.
 
Thomas Mathai said:
A good number of facilities that use LTO and other tape systems are using Tar. It's a throw back to the Unix days, but it's free and works. The tricky thing is that Tar on Unix, Linux and Tar emulation software don't always have the same drivers or read in data optimally depending on how it's written.

If you're only use the LTO drive for internal use and restore the data to a bunch of Firewire 800 drives to give to a post house, that can make life easier.
Click to expand...

Many facilities use backup/database software that makes file restores a lot simpler and faster. It does, however, limit the usefulness of LTO as an interchange format, because only the physical format is common.
 
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