tape drive for archives - recommendations?

[adam christl]

Hey fellow red community, we're trying to figure out a good archival setup for projects and media. Up to this point it's been drive based and our hard drives are overflowing. We have a small studio; 8 computers - mostly Mac based, but with a couple of PC's. I am completely new to the world of tape drives. Any recommendations for a good system?
Should I go lto-6? Does it make more sense to get a mobile unit or just plug something into our server? Any brands I should look for, or stay away from?
Anyway any help would be appreciated.
Thanks!

 

[Marc Wielage]

I've seen HP and Quantum LTO-6 drives used at different post houses in LA, and they seem to work well. Long term reliability is always a good question, but if you make two copies of an important project, I would hope one or both of them would be salvageable in the years to come. I'd vote for a rackmount unit.

 

[Michael Romano]

Tolis Group LTO6 and BRU pkgs. I have desktop version and works well.

 

[adam christl]

I was thinking about HP. I'm not familiar with Tolis group, but will look into them too.
Marc, you mention long term reliability. What's the concern with long term reliability with tape? I thought that was the reason to go over Hard drives? Will definitely be making dupes, but still the intention is that this would be for archival purposes. I love when clients come back asking for changes to work you did years earlier.

 

[Nick Fury]

I was thinking about HP. I'm not familiar with Tolis group, but will look into them too.
Marc, you mention long term reliability. What's the concern with long term reliability with tape? I thought that was the reason to go over Hard drives? Will definitely be making dupes, but still the intention is that this would be for archival purposes. I love when clients come back asking for changes to work you did years earlier.

Hi Adam,

This would be a useful thread to start with: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showth...-(-Edit)-and-Archive-Bundles!&highlight=Tolis

Give them a call...

Thank you very much

Fury

 

[Tim Jones]

To the general question of going to tape, LTO, while very handy in today's 1080P workflow, will become almost indispensable in the 4K, UHD world as a simple 43 minute show (around 750GB to 830GB in 1080P) could grow to over 2.1TB of data. We are currently backing up day to day operations for a large number of features that are consuming over 8TB per day. At under $70 per 2.5TB of space, LTO-6 tapes are very economical when compared to spinning disks. Additionally, LTO-6 can move that data at over 180MB/sec (*using BRU) whereas a single 4TB, 7200RPM disk drive will be limited to around 110MB/sec. LTO longevity is the best in the business with conservative numbers in the 50 year range.

I was thinking about HP. I'm not familiar with Tolis group, but will look into them too.
Marc, you mention long term reliability. What's the concern with long term reliability with tape? I thought that was the reason to go over Hard drives? Will definitely be making dupes, but still the intention is that this would be for archival purposes. I love when clients come back asking for changes to work you did years earlier.

TOLIS Group is an HP OEM - meaning that we bundle the HP devices into our own configurations to provide both complete solutions, solutions that are more task-specific, and a better "bang for the buck" ratio. Our solution can provide a single standalone drive, a dual drive configuration, or up to 28 drives and 560 tapes in a single rack. Our kits provide everything except the Mac system - drives, software, media, HBA, cables, support - so that you don't need to go to 4 or 5 different vendors to get things working.

If your budget permits, I would urge you to go to LTO-6 - whether from us or another vendor - since it makes both fiscal and long term sense.