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Thinking about getting an LTO system

Rick Darge

Rick Darge

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So with my upcoming Epic-X, I'm worried about all this storage. I have about 20+ drives sitting on my shelf right now that I'd like to store away. I'm looking for a cost-effective method and was thinking LTO but don't know where to begin. Which one should I get? LTO-3, 4, 5? How much is a system? How much are the tapes? Are they reliable?
 
Rick Darge said:
So with my upcoming Epic-X, I'm worried about all this storage. I have about 20+ drives sitting on my shelf right now that I'd like to store away. I'm looking for a cost-effective method and was thinking LTO but don't know where to begin. Which one should I get? LTO-3, 4, 5? How much is a system? How much are the tapes? Are they reliable?
Click to expand...

LTO5.

Anywhere between $1500 and $3500.

About $50.

Yes.
 
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Thanks Mike, what causes the jump from a 1500 to a 3500 system? Any brands, model numbers to start with?
 
Rick Darge said:
Thanks Mike, what causes the jump from a 1500 to a 3500 system? Any brands, model numbers to start with?
Click to expand...

Internal vs. external, different brands, the usual stuff. Just do a Google search and you'll find a variety of possibilities. I'm a bit partial to Quantum and HP, but they're all reliable.
 
Where can you buy tapes for $50? I am paying nearly double that! And I need about 20 right now
 
Adam Eden said:
Where can you buy tapes for $50? I am paying nearly double that! And I need about 20 right now
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You need to shop around I guess. I still mostly buy and use Ultrium 4 tapes (Fuji) and I haven't paid more than $21/tape after shipping costs in over a year. For LTO-5, they're still expensive, but coming down in price. $55~$60 per tape, after shipping, seems to be the best price right now. You do have to buy bulk packs of tapes to get the prices, sure. But who wouldn't do that? After all, if you only need one tape here or there, you may as well back up to hard drives.

If you're on a Mac, the best small solution is the HP desktop LTO-5 with an ATTO controller card and BRU software.

You can also go the Cache-A route... A bit different approach and more costly to buy into, but there are some advantages there too for some people.

On Windows/Linux, you have better hardware compatibility and you can branch out your tape drive and controller card selections somewhat. The desktop HP units with ATTO controller is always a WIN, though. Quantum makes nice drives, but I've found their support on the Mac to be lacking. They pretty much only work with the bundled LSI controller cards and don't perform as fast as the HP / ATTO combination. You also have more software choices on the Windows and Linux platforms.

You can go with an LTO-4 drive to save some money, but it's the previous generation. It will read and write LTO-4 and LTO-3 tapes and provide read-only access to LTO-2. LTO-5 reads and writes LTO-5 and 4 tapes and read only access for LTO-3.

Tandberg has some great units if you want larger with auto-loaders and cataloging systems. If you're just looking into it now, this isn't what you want. :)
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
You can also go the Cache-A route... A bit different approach and more costly to buy into, but there are some advantages there too for some people.
Click to expand...

I don't disagree, but a lot of what Cache-A has tried to bring to the table - namely, mounting a tape as you would a drive, with random access and direct manipulation using standard OS tools - is available using LTFS, which is available for all common platforms as an open source download. If one wants to use a more evolved commercial tool, BRU is fine and they are or will be supporting LTFS directly.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
On Windows/Linux, you have better hardware compatibility and you can branch out your tape drive and controller card selections somewhat. The desktop HP units with ATTO controller is always a WIN, though. Quantum makes nice drives, but I've found their support on the Mac to be lacking. They pretty much only work with the bundled LSI controller cards and don't perform as fast as the HP / ATTO combination. You also have more software choices on the Windows and Linux platforms.
Click to expand...

Quite true, although I will admit that I'm partial to Linux for these kind of things. We've found the best performance combination to be Linux host, SAS connectivity, and Quantum or HP drives, but YMMV.
 
Been using a Tandberg T24 loader LTO4, for about 1.5 years. Good reliability on a library of almost 200 tapes. Fuji brand. We buy them pre barcode labeled from dataspan.com in bulk.
 
Damnit, LTO is confusing.. I don't know what to get. I want to get the most cost effective setup available. LTO4 looks good. I just want to archive all this data I have just sitting there. Don't need anything too fancy pants
 
Personally, I found BRU much harder to use than Presstore.
 
I'd go straight to LTO 5. Capacity for one and future proofing for another. The initial cost is the pill to swallow but after that the tapes run you less than you'll pay for a 1.5TB hard drive, so you should start to see some savings down the line with a more reliable format.
 
Thanks Steve. Can you recommend a good brand to start with? LTO is a lot more confusing than I had hoped for. It seems like you need a perfect recipe of drive, SAS card, software to make it all work perfectly.
 
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