Dlt and/or LTO archive

[Kevin Francis]

Matthew-

We purchased the LTO-3A Superloader a month or so ago and we’ve been working through issues with the Quantum tech support guys to get it working consistently since we’ve had it. I will say they are being very helpful and I’m confident we’ll get the issues resolved. There really wasn’t a better backup option in my opinion. We’re an all Mac network and we’re primarily using the FTP app Transmit to move stuff to the tape drive and back– seems much less clunky than the web interface they’ve developed. It is very fast if you are on a GigE network transferring large files (big Quicktime movies, 10GB or so) but slower when transferring P2 data where there are many smaller files and folders. But the shelf life, capacity, and cost of the LTO tapes is unbeatable.

Kevin

[Richard Harrington]

We’ve been making blu-ray archives instead

[Lars Wikstrom]

Exabyte came out with an external firewire version a couple months ago for around $1100. It can hold 320 gigs compressed per $80 tape. It is cheaper the Blu-Ray and will save you more time. I also was thinking of blue-ray but I didn’t want to keep swapping out discs. I felt it better to have a 320 gig partition on a drive and when it fills up just write it to a tape and empty the drive and move on with life.

-Lars

[Pablo Korona]

this RDX QuikStor solution is not for Mac is it? I just scoured the exabyte website and currently there does not appear to be support for mac.

[Adam Smith]

I picked up the Exabyte VXA-2 a few months ago… it’ll put 80GB (160 compressed) onto one of the big tapes. The VXA-320 can do twice that on the same tape, but for some reason it wasn’t an option for me, coulda been $$$-related!

—
Video Photographer / Avid Editor / Final Cut Neophyte

[Lars Wikstrom]

There site is a little hard to navigate. Here is a link to the OS X fire wire version that can do 320 gigs compressed. It only came out in October and lists for $1200 on there site. I am guessing that you can get it cheaper. Tapes I have seen for $65 which is not bad for storing 320 gigs in one shot. I am so tired of doing multi disc back up sessions.

I plan to have a 320 gig partition and when it is full of P2 drive filler footage, back up and erase.

https://www.exabyte.com/company/press/display.cfm?id=4017

-Lars

[Craig Hirshberg]

Matthew,

I’ve heard that the Quantum drives are “MXF aware.” I’m not entirley sure what this means, but was that a factor in your purchase decision over any other regular (and possibly less expensive) tape drive?

Curious what the benefits of that are.

Craig

[Matthew Romanis]

Hi Craig,
We haven’t yet got the drive, but I believe that it means that each LTO tape has reference to all the time code data of individual files on the drive. It means that it is easy to get partial material of logged items rather than the entire logged file. The same applies to any data you may have in the MXF data fields. The LTO tape is effectively aware of what is on it rather than just being a “dumb” device.
Quantum can send you a DVD that demonstrates this in action.
Matthew.

[Kevin Francis]

Matthew- that is correct. You can do partial restores of MXF files based on timecode. We liked the drive because it plugs into gigabit ethernet and you can access it from any computer on the network with a web browser, no backup software required. And if you need to send a tape to another facility, if they’ve got the LTO-3A drive they can read your tapes without any proprietary software. The tapes hold 400GB and cost $40. And in my experience you can move data at about 1.3 – 1.5GB/min.

Kevin

[Michael Lovelady]

Kevin B,

Hi, wondering if I could pick your brain on what you did to get your LTO 3a online… We’ve been working on getting ours up for about 48hrs and while quantum has been as helpful as possible, they’re struggling hard due to having Zero mac experience 🙁 Wondering if I could point them at the Quantum Tech you were working with? Also, any other words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers,
Mike