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Anybody with a new Mac Pro using BRU PE 4.0?
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Jim,
Bru makes a very fine product, but I do not buy the arguments they make in the article you site
With respect to the argument that Bru has more data protection than LTFS, this is undoubtedly true but really unnecessary with the accuracy and data correction in LTO tape and drives, inherently an order or two of magnitude better than hard disk drives. It is possible that LFTS might screw up more than a stable Bru configuration, but if you verify your archive upon completion this is a non issue.
With respect to the argument that that Bru’s ongoing support and escrowed software makes it as safe as a broadly used standard like LTFS, well your experience here might be evidence this could be wrong. I don’t know if you can run LTFS packages on your new Mac Pro yet, but its a good bet that the market will cause open source solutions to get there quickly whereas it may take Bru more time.
Tom Goldberg
TGCS
30201 Rainbow Hill Rd.
Evergreen, CO 80439
mailto:tomgoldberg@gmail.com
https://tomgoldberg.net -
Thank you, Tom, for your counsel.
There has been an LTFS option in the BRU PE app going back to version 3, I believe. I have not tried it because of their advice against it.
I don’t suppose it would do any harm to make tapes in both formats and give LTFS a trial run. I have an HP LTO-5 drive, and tape costs have gotten considerably cheaper than they were when even LTO-4 was first introduced – from about $75 each (for LTO-4) to $25 (for LTO-5).
Is there an open source LTFS app for OSX 10.15.x that you recommend?
There’s probably a way to do it in the Terminal, right? I’m not comfortable using the Terminal for anything without expert guidance.
BTW, I tested the latest beta of ArGest Backup (formerly BRU PE) yesterday. There’s still one bug of it over-restoring files not selected for restore during a restore routine, but other functions appear to be working properly. That gives me reason to hope that an official solid update is around the corner.
Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.comMacPro7,1 24-core – 256 GB RAM – AMD Radeon Pro Vega II 32 GB – 10.15.3
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I don’t know if you can run LTFS packages on your new Mac Pro yet, but its a good bet that the market will cause open source solutions to get there quickly whereas it may take Bru more time.
Tom – BRU’s been on Catalina since long before launch (unlike LTFS). It was simply the GUI that was held up due to Apple throwing us all (meaning ALL Apple developers) some new curves in the form of the protected union filesystem mounting and refusal to allow any 32bit code on the new system.
As for the state of things now, BRU’s new workflow wrapper is our new “ArGest® Backup” suite. It’s available and a good number of existing users are already beating the heck out of it with use on macOS, Windows, and Linux.
You also state –
“It is possible that LFTS might screw up more than a stable Bru configuration, but if you verify your archive upon completion this is a non issue.”
– but the question is exactly HOW do you do that? Compare all of the files? Create MD5 or SHA256 sidecar files and then recheck those? And what about in 2 years? With BRU this is all self contained and automatic.
Remember, as in science lab – be sure to check your facts and sources. 😉
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.tolisgroup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
[Jim Curtis] “Is anything in this article inaccurate? I’m open-minded about changing, although at this point, I have a fairly significant number of BRU tapes I’d have do restore and re-write in LTFS.”
As I’ve stated publicly many times regarding that paper and my LTFS Caveats piece – if anyone can refute any of the points, I’ll gladly update and/or remove them. My goal in sharing the information is not BRU world dominance, but rather that potential tape users have the full facts.
We’ve been at this tape game for more than 35 years, and we’ve seen a lot of “tape as disk” options come and go. This is why BRU is still the same BRU that it was in 1988 and why the BRU engine that you use today can restore data from tapes that were written to a 250MB QIC cartridge in 1990 on an SCO XENIX system. At this point, you can’t even restore from an LTFS tape that was written just 6 years ago unless you have the old LTFS code and the knowledge to compile and install it.
BTW – Jim, Marcos and Eric send a great big thanks for your feedback and Eric said to tell you they’ve found the errant entry that caused that odd restore issue.
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.tolisgroup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
[Tim Jones] “BTW – Jim, Marcos and Eric send a great big thanks for your feedback and Eric said to tell you they’ve found the errant entry that caused that odd restore issue.”
Tim, you are all welcome. I’m happy to help where and when I can.
I had to restore some media yesterday. I used the latest release. It went overboard restoring more files than I asked for, but since I can monitor the restore progress, I can abort it after the files I needed are written.
Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.comMacPro7,1 24-core – 256 GB RAM – AMD Radeon Pro Vega II 32 GB – 10.15.3
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