LTO backup

[Eric Hansen]

hey Kevin

i’ve been around the block, so to speak, with data tape for video archive. i started with the Quantum SDLT 600a, which is what Cache-A’s current products are based on. having a network device was great, but it was slow and making second copies wasn’t that easy. it used FTP as its interface and all the editors in my office understood how it worked. so it was easy and i hear that the new Cache-A stuff is even easier. i don’t like the idea of only having one though, as i explain below.

currently, i’m using BRU PE with 2 HP LTO4 decks. i went with 2 decks because my previous experience is that the tape drive will always go down at the worst time. i’ve had these HP decks running almost every day for 6 months and haven’t had a problem. but i’m glad i have 2 just in case. i run them in doubler-mode, so 2 tapes are written at once (one for in-house, one for out-of-house). including writing and verifying, it takes 6 hours per tape. so on a typical work day i can get 2 tape sets written.

i’m now wishing i bought an autoloader. since i’m getting 2 tape sets done per day, a single drive 8 tape autoloader wouldn’t go “faster” (writing and verifying 4 tapes would take 24 hours, the same as i’m doing now), but it would be cool to be able to set it to go over a weekend. or at least set it and forget it for a few days.

in the future, i would like to get an autoloader running on the SAN server (uses the same R380 card as the RAIDs in our SAN), and then have another LTO4 drive on another computer specifically for offloading. our current problem is i’ll be writing a tape, an editor will ask for some stock footage shots that are on another LTO4 tape, but i can’t get to them because theres a few hours left in the current write. a separate system with its own drive would be nice in this instance. with BRU, all their software runs for free in read-only mode, all the way back to their first version (if you wrote a tape with BRU 1.0 in the late 80s, the current version of BRU PE can still read it, and for free! this is why i’m not really worried about BRU’s proprietary format) one alternative to this that we’re considering, is having a bare hard drive copy of all of our LTO4 tapes, and putting SATA drive adapters (toasters) on every edit system for immediate previewing and offloading. the previewing is key. you can’t preview footage on a tape like you can a hard drive. our archive is now at 120 tapes, which is roughly 84TB. thats a lot of hard drives!

like others, i would also suggest going with LTO5, but keep buying LTO4 tapes. they are currently way cheaper per GB than LTO5 (all LTO equipment writes back 1 generation and reads back 2).

another thing you need to consider is a database to track all your tape’s contents. i’m not sure how Cache-A does this. BRU’s is really primitive, so i don’t rely on it. i think Cat DV will do this. i use a really simple app that makes aliases. so i save the structure of the tape as aliases on our server, which is then searchable with Spotlight. not the most ideal thing when dealing with video (it would be great to have previews), but it works great mostly because it’s so simple. i’m always looking for better options though.

e

Eric Hansen – http://www.erichansen.tv

[Mike Johnson]

I would be interested to start an Archiving Forum here. Please advise, thanks.

..mj

[John Mcclary]

I use AutoCat. It is cheap and will catalog drives by creating aliases. It’s quick, idiot-proof, and drives stay searchable by Spotlight over the network after you unmount them.
https://kebawe.com/autocat/

John McClary