[Herb Sevush]

[Andrew Richards] “when you consider that it is a server with a few TB of HDD and a $3K LTO drive in it, you can see how they arrive at their prices.”

I’m not questioning their pricing, they get rave reviews it seems from everyone who uses them. The problem is dealing with enterprise instead of consumer oriented gear, economies of scale do not bring the costs down. We are all spoiled by being able to hitch our wagons to mass produced commodities, and I believe it’s actually to be harder to do that in these new Ipad days for those of us who still need heavy iron.

[Andrew Richards] “GNU tar or LTFS on LTO-5 are starting to be used for deliverables in some places.”

If this trend continues then someone will come up with a less expensive way to do it. This reminds me of the old linear days of editing when a floppy drive for a dedicated controller could cost $2000, when that very same physical drive, less the specialized drivers, cost about $80. Someone had to be paid to write those drivers, and if your only selling a few hundred units the cost doesn’t get spread out very far.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Andrew Richards] “But if you want it to cost $1,000, sorry. Frankly, for anyone who ever bought any sort of professional VTR, Cache-A is not that expensive by comparison.”

$4K would be nice enough.

I understand the comparison to a VTR, I’ve used it on myself to try to convince me to go that way. Problem with the comparison is a VTR is a piece of production and post equipment, you buy one in situations where you will loose jobs if you don’t have the right deck.

Archival is an option, there are other, cheaper, though not as good ways to do it, and it’s mostly there for the piece of mind of the editor, the client ain’t picking up the tab.

In larger facilities with multiple edit stations it’s easier to justify and amortize the cost. For an editor with a single edit system, 8K can equal or exceed your entire yearly hardware budget.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Frank Gothmann] “Actually, if you are using BRU not with its proprietary format but just as a front end for LTFS you may not need Linux at all”

Got it, thanks.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

This is excellent news. Now I’m not beholding to Apple and I can go ahead.

[Frank Gothmann] “I mentioned the new ATTO controller in a post below because it has 4 ports and according to my VAR it works fine with tape and Raid.”

I have the ATTO R680. It has 2 ports, I’m using one for my raid now, the other supposedly supports an LTO.

Again, thanks for the help.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

Andrew,

Thanks again for the info. As much as it seems the best way to go I don’t think I can justify the 8 – 9 K to go with Cache-A. It’s more than double the price of a BRU bundle, and my needs are relatively simple. But it is very tempting.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

Let me see if I get this right. I get an LTO-5 BRU OSX version now, store everything as LTFS. If /when I migrate to windows I will have to rebuild my raid anyhow, format it as NTFS. When I want to use the LTO with that box, boot as Linux and both the raid and it’s files will be available as well as the LTO drive for backup. Is that correct?

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Frank Gothmann] “I’d look into BRU with LTFS or think about the BRU/MAC BRU/Linux variant. Linux can cerate a bootable USB stick with one click and operation is dead simple.”

I don’t see how the linux would work for me. My raid will be attached to whatever computer is hosting the LTO drive. If I booted to Linux I would loose access to the raid, so that doesn’t work. The BPU / LTFS seems a better avenue, my storage needs are large dead simple, I’m just looking for something that can migrate with me if I change platforms.

Thanks again for the response.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

Frank –

Thanks for the info, even though it’s definitely not what i was hoping to hear. In researching LTFS on the web I saw a number of posts, dated from January 2011, that complained about LTFS accuracy and performance, especially dealing with large numbers of files. is this still the case, or do you find it stable and suitable for important backups?

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

Andrew –

Thanks for the reply, even though the info is more than a mite depressing. Basically I can’t do anything till I know my long term platform requirements, and since Apple never talks, I can’t really plan. The idea of keeping a MacPro alive long term just to handle my tape backups seems both risky and a major waste of time and space. Do you know if the Cache-A system is similarly not cross platform?

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Todd Kopriva] “We have publicly announced that there will be a new version of Creative Suite software in the first half of 2012.”

Now there’s a bold statement. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know it will be out by NAB. Still, as someone long subject to Apple’s silences on things crucial to my business, I appreciate the nugget.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf