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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?

Keep in mind that a post house charges around $500/hour for data transfer. So you don't really want them to restore 1.2TB from your LTOs if the actual project only uses 150GB of it.
 
Does anyone have any recommendations or comments about SAS controllers with external interface ports for the Mac Pro? I'm looking at the ATTO H380 and the HighPoint RocketRAID 2341MS. The latter is $100 cheaper, but is only a single interface. However I can't seem to find confirmation that it will actually let me run a mini-SAS cable to an external SAS device or enclosure. All the reviews and their product literature talk about how it uses a single mini-SAS connector to drive up to 8 SATA devices.

The ATTO one looks better. It will give me a second port for connecting another RAID in the future or something. Anyone used this card?

The reason I'm asking, is I'm seriously considering a desktop form-factor LTO-3 or LTO-4 drive and most of the new models are moving to a SAS interface.

Anyone looked at the new Dell LTO-4 models? Their HH desktop LTO-4 for $3200 looks pretty tempting. What about their desktop LTO-3? At $1800, it looks great.
 
Mathew,

Was wondering if there's something about the enclosure I should be looking at or fixing? It came in an enclosure... Thanks!

Originally Posted by Rich Malmberg View Post
"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?"

Could it have anything to do with the enclosure you bought?
 
I know this may seem off topic of LTO-3 drives, but I swear if I can find the answer for this it will have something to do with LTO-3 drives.

Okay, here's my question... I am looking at this enclosure for a RAID system: http://www.norcotek.com/item_detail.php?categoryid=8&modelno=ds1240

It says it has 3x Infiniband Multilane 4X 4-channel interface connectors. Does that mean that that I would have to connect the three Infinibands to three separate mini-sas ports to access all 12 hard drive bays, or does it mean that one cable can access all 12 drives, but adding the other two would give it 2x more bandwidth? (that's what this page makes it sound like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InfiniBand)

Basically, I'm trying to find out if I need a PCI-E card that has 4 external mini-sas ports, or only two (or even one!)

Thanks,

Matthew
 
Most Post houses I know do not charge 500/hr for LTO-3 data backup. If you're getting charged that give me a call.
 
Does the LTo-3 series act like the 3A where you can drag and drop? Or is that only a 3A series functionality? Those 600A's are pretty hard to find. Or so it seems from my initial research.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
Does anyone have any recommendations or comments about SAS controllers with external interface ports for the Mac Pro? I'm looking at the ATTO H380 and the HighPoint RocketRAID 2341MS. The latter is $100 cheaper, but is only a single interface. However I can't seem to find confirmation that it will actually let me run a mini-SAS cable to an external SAS device or enclosure. All the reviews and their product literature talk about how it uses a single mini-SAS connector to drive up to 8 SATA devices.

The ATTO one looks better. It will give me a second port for connecting another RAID in the future or something. Anyone used this card?

The reason I'm asking, is I'm seriously considering a desktop form-factor LTO-3 or LTO-4 drive and most of the new models are moving to a SAS interface.
Click to expand...

Hey Jeff, I've been looking alot at this as I want to get a LTO-3 with a SAS connection since I found an external drive for $1600. The RocketRAID 2322 costs $230-$270 and has two external mini-sas ports. Everything that I've found about it all you need is the correct cable to go from mini-sas to mini-sas.

Here's what I'm looking at but am still a little fuzzy on... LTO-3 external drive with mini-sas going to a RocketRAID 2322 card. On the other mini-sas port have the mini-sas to e-sata cable that goes to a 8 bay eSATA RAID case (two of the breakouts on the cable would hook up as each cable can only access 4 drives--therefore leaving 2 cables to add another 8 bay case in the future for a bigger RAID)

I think this will work, but I am worried about putting both the LTO-3 and RAID 5 system on the same PCI-e card. My plan is when I am writing to the LTO-3 to be reading off the RAID, so I'm wondering if the bandwidth will be choked.

I will go ahead and contact Highpoint to see what they say about this. If it works, it will be a LTO-3 drive and RAID 5 system for under $4k.

Matthew
 
You'll be fine...realistically LTO3 is writing at 50-70 MB/s and your RAID card will be more than able to handle it. Its important to remember we're not talking uncompressed file sizes here in the case of red cine files. Now when you get to finishing projects...have fun ;-)
 
Jeff Brue said:
You'll be fine...realistically LTO3 is writing at 50-70 MB/s and your RAID card will be more than able to handle it. Its important to remember we're not talking uncompressed file sizes here in the case of red cine files. Now when you get to finishing projects...have fun ;-)
Click to expand...

Well, after a little research I found out that the RocketRaid 2322 is a 4x (lane) PCI-e card, so it should support 1 GB of data transfer each way per second (if I understood the specs correctly.) That would be more than fast enough to support both a LTO-3 drive while writing from a RAID5 system on the same card.

Personally, I don't plan on using uncompressed HD for a while (as I don't need it for the work I do.) However, the RocketRAID should handle that speed just fine, and how I am planning on building the system I should have no problems supporting 200-300MB sustained for uncompressed HD. PLUS, I would never be writing uncompressed HD to the LTO-3 at 200-300 MB's a second.

Hopefully someone at highpoint will get back to me soon. If anyone has an idea where else I could ask someone about this, I'd love to know.

Matthew
 
Depends on the client and the project...there's a big difference in the backend data management for a feature versus a music video.
 
macville said:
Well, after a little research I found out that the RocketRaid 2322 is a 4x (lane) PCI-e card, so it should support 1 GB of data transfer each way per second (if I understood the specs correctly.) That would be more than fast enough to support both a LTO-3 drive while writing from a RAID5 system on the same card.

Personally, I don't plan on using uncompressed HD for a while (as I don't need it for the work I do.) However, the RocketRAID should handle that speed just fine, and how I am planning on building the system I should have no problems supporting 200-300MB sustained for uncompressed HD. PLUS, I would never be writing uncompressed HD to the LTO-3 at 200-300 MB's a second.

Hopefully someone at highpoint will get back to me soon. If anyone has an idea where else I could ask someone about this, I'd love to know.

Matthew
Click to expand...

HI Matthew,

I'm not sure wether this is going to work out for you properly. Since LTO3 is not the newest standard and SCSI connected LTO3 drives are pretty cheap I would not go this "experimental" route.

We have a hardware Raid5 connected to a G5 via FC (SAN Server) and a LTO3 connected via SCSI. The SCSI actually can do 160-320 MB/sec. wich is never used at all since LTO can do only 30 - 40MB/sec sustained (at least what we get). Together with Retrospect (as far as I know the only way in Apple land) it works very reliable not very fast though. For faster performance get LTO4 - not worth the money yet, IMHO.

Happy backuping,

Hans
 
Hans von Sonntag said:
HI Matthew,

...since LTO can do only 30 - 40MB/sec sustained (at least what we get).
Click to expand...

You should be getting about double that if you're backing up from a fast server. We get almost 5 GB/minute (about 83MB/sec) using a SCSI connected LTO3 from a Bright SAN via a PC client using Yosemite's backup software.
 
Jeff Brue said:
Most Post houses I know do not charge 500/hr for LTO-3 data backup. If you're getting charged that give me a call.
Click to expand...

Well, the post house here quoted me 500$ for their "FLOW" to copy around 10GB of footage from a fire wire drive to Digi Beta (one hour minimum). And that was for a low budget music video. So I guess those rates will apply to any kind of project. I think this price is way to high, too.
 
but digi beta isn't lto 3. plus your using other video gear to load the footage onto from firewire then playing out to Digi-B so its gonna be some sort of edit suite you looking at for $500 an hour.. not a lto3 backup machine.

s
 
SCSI Controller

SCSI Controller

Hey Irri,

I'm curious on the scsi controller you have and the OS you use for configuring the LTO4. I have an LTO3 on Solaris and Linux with a LSI 21320 controller and am getting poor performances.
thxs
 
flameop said:
but digi beta isn't lto 3. plus your using other video gear to load the footage onto from firewire then playing out to Digi-B so its gonna be some sort of edit suite you looking at for $500 an hour.. not a lto3 backup machine.

s
Click to expand...

Yes, but the post houses here don't have a file based grading system like scratch. They can only do tape to tape. So you do need to go through this system (in that case FCP) to write your Quicktimes to Digi Beta or HDCAM SR.

On the last project we brought in an Avid project and the editor didn't consolidate correctly. It was a DVCPro HD short and they had to copy all the media to the online suite. It took 5 hours to copy the footage to the Avid and import it. Luckily it was a student film and they had a flat rate.

What I want to say here is that it is important that when you go to a post house for the finishing and you bring your LTO tapes that have all of your footage on it you need a drive or software that can quickly access the files it needs.
 
corky said:
Hey Irri,

I'm curious on the scsi controller you have and the OS you use for configuring the LTO4. I have an LTO3 on Solaris and Linux with a LSI 21320 controller and am getting poor performances.
thxs
Click to expand...

Forgive my innocence for I have never used a tape drive before. But, from offhollywoods remarks about how the 600a (that's lto-3 correct?) works similar to how a hard drive would where you can see every file on there as if it were a finder window, and you can pull just one file off if needed. Do the internal LTO-3 drives work the same way? How long does it take to seek to that specific file and pull it off (obviously it depends on the size of the file, ballpark figure would be helpful)? And one last question. What is the error/failure rate of LTO-3 tape drives? Any experience there? Thanks.
 
Lto-3 Ultrium

Lto-3 Ultrium

WHICH ONE IS BETTER

WITH this Interface Ultra 3 SCSI Fast/Wide ?
or with

LTO-3 native fibre channel tape drive

which one please . ?:cold:
 
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