Archiving: LTO-3a vs. the cheaper spread: MXF important?

[Shane Ross]

DLT is the other option…simple DATA backup.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Noah Kadner]

If you can afford it- go LTO3. It’s faster, more spacious and much easier to deal with than DLT. And you can go cheapish with it. Dell makes some drives that are cheaper than the Quantum MXF aware ones.

-Noah

My FCP Blog. Unlock the secrets of the DVX100, HVX200 and Apple Color and Win a Free Letus Extreme.
Now featuring the Sony EX1 Guidebook, DVD Studio Pro and Sound for Film and TV.
https://www.callboxlive.com

[Helmut Kobler]

You might also look into LTO-4. It’s more expensive, but doubles the storage capacity (thereabouts). Also, I vaguely remember coming across an LTO-4 drive that was priced not TOO much higher than LTO-3 counterparts.

[Doug Nichol]

I have the LTO-3 HH and it works great. It costs around $2,500 – a lot cheaper than the MXF version. I use it to back up all my P2 footage and Final Cut projects – works great.

[Bob Cole]

[Doug Nichol] “I have the LTO-3 HH and it works great. It costs around $2,500 – a lot cheaper than the MXF version. I use it to back up all my P2 footage and Final Cut projects – works great.”

That drive connects via SCSI or SAS. I haven’t been in Mac-land for long so I’m curious — which interface are you using? Did you install internally or externally? I’m also interested in adding an external SATA RAID; is it possible to add both the LTO-3 HH and a SATA RAID?

Thanks for the reply — this sounds promising.

The biggest advantage, for me, of the LTO-3a ($7K) would be the fact that it connects to the entire network via gigabit ethernet. Is there any intermediate product which does that? I could almost buy individual HH’s for three of my computers for that price.

I have tried contacting Quantum and going through their website. Strange that I’d learn more about Quantum from a COW P2 forum than from the Quantum website. A comment in case Quantum is listening, which I doubt: they don’t seem interested in explaining their products to the pro video community — or perhaps they want us all to buy the most expensive solution.

Bob C

MacPro 2 x 3GHz dualcore; 10 GB 667MHz
Kona LHe
Sony HDV Z1
Sony HDV M25U
HD-Connect MI
Betacam UVW1800
DVCPro AJ-D650

[Doug Nichol]

I have a SCSI card that I bought from ATTO to hook the LTO3 drive to my MacPro (Intel). I also have an XServe Raid hooked up through the Fiber Channel card so that works for my storage. If you are a facility with multiple edit bays then obviously it’s better to spend the money for the network enabled MXF drive, but if you just have one edit system you can make the LTO-3 HH work fine – it’s really fast as well. You need to but the program Retrospect ($100) to make the Quantum drive work – you use Retrospect to make your back-ups.
Good luck.
Doug

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Doug Nichol] “You need to but the program Retrospect ($100) to make the Quantum drive work – you use Retrospect to make your back-ups. “

See that’s another advantage of the more expensive system. No retrospect. It’s all FTP based and can be accessed from any web browser anywhere or taken to any facility/field shoot anywhere. With Retrospect, you’re locked to retrospect.

Also, (and I am not sure about this) but doesn’t MXF aware allow to restore partial tapes (or really only the data you need) instead of restoring all 300 or 400 GBs of the tape? Might want to check on that too.

Find a reseller, a video reseller that deals with Quantum, don’t try and talk to Quantum themselves, they seem to have no real question answerers, especially when it comes to video.

Jeremy

[Jesse Rosen]

Just a warning about Retrospect: in the past (haven’t re-tested in the past year or so) Retrospect would not back up an empty folder. This would play havoc with some implementations of P2 workflow. I’d highly recommend BRU instead, or go for the network drives. Actually, there are some issues to be aware of with the network drives as well – there are certain characters that aren’t compatible with its internal file system. Use a real FTP client to backup, not the built-in JAVA-based one – you don’t get good error messages with it.

—
Jesse Rosen
Director of Technical Development
Abel Cine Tech, Inc.
http://www.bustedskull.com

[Doug Nichol]

Thanks for the info. I made some tests – backing up a bunch of P2 material onto the LTO 3 then re-importing it and it worked well. Retrospect released a new version late last year so maybe it fixed the problem… But thanks for the info anyway. I just use the drive to back up raw P2 footage and then also to archive Final Cut projects when I’m finished with them.

[Doug Nichol]

Just checked out the BRU website – looks like a better program than Retrospect… thanks for the tip Jesse