[Mel Feliciano]

Glad to hear that HP Support is “brilliant”. My experience with HP Small & Medium Business Sales wasn’t that great. First it was the long waiting time and then the limited product knowledge from the rep. Their website for Storage solutions is kind of buggy, and when you start your search from hp.com, it doesn’t always take you to the same product page.

I’m sorry, I’m kind of confused. Are you using the R680 or the H680 to interface with the LTO5 drive?.

Did you purchase the drive directly from HP?

[Mel Feliciano]

I agree 100 percent with Bob. I like Western Digital Black Caviars because of their performance. They get good reviews and come with a 5 year warranty, but are more expensive than the Blue Caviar. A couple of years ago I purchased 3 (it was Black Friday) of the 1TB with 32MB Cache, retail box; no bare or bulk. The next day I had to return one of them to my local Best Buy store, because it never started. That thing was well protected inside the box and the box didn’t show any sign of abuse.

The other day I booted up my old computer, year 2000 IBM IntelliStation. I keep this computer in a storage and had only turned it on 3 or 4 times during the last two years. To my surprise, all the hard drives (one IBM, one Seagate, and one Western Digital) are still working, including the 9GB Ultra Wide SCSI drive that came with the system.

The best advice is to backup and archive. That’s why I’m shopping for an LTO-5 drive. Right now I’m using blu rays, but they are too slow. No having a backup/archive system is like driving around without auto insurance.

Personally, I prefer Western Digital Black Caviars, but like I said above, even those can fail out of the box.

[Mel Feliciano]

Hi Luke, how is your testing coming along. I also have a 4,1 Mac Pro and an Atto R680 that was included with my G-Technology G-Speed ES Pro bundle. My next purchase is going to be the LTO-5 drive. I noticed that Tandberg and Quantum are more affordable than similar products from HP. Did you buy the Tolis Group hardware/software bundle or, did you purchase the devices and software separately?.

[Mel Feliciano]

Something very weird happend when I went back to the HP Storage website. Now when I go to the LTO drive product information page, instead of “BUY NOW”, the button says “FIND A LOCAL RETAILER”. Makes me think that what I saw the other day was some kind of haked into their site by online retailers.

What it is for sure, is that the HP sales rep I talked to over the phone had no clue about what could have cause the discrepancy (bug) in the system. The other thing he could’t confirm was if ServerSupply.com is an authorized reseller. So I’m still shopping for a HP Ultrium 3000 LTO-5 drive. I just can’t pay the $2,899 plus tax HP is asking for. Why are LTO drives so expensive and difficult to buy?

[Mel Feliciano]

Very interesting information Tim.

The drives I’m talking about are full-height external with mini SAS connection. I went to the HP official site and finally found the information I was looking for. After you select the drive you want, there is an option to “buy online”. When I click on that button I get a list of resellers and one of them is “serversupply.com”. So, I guess it is safe to assume that this is not gray market product. I’m going to contact HP anyways, just to be sure.

The drives I’m looking into are:

Ultrium 3280 (full-height)
– EH900A, EH900B

Ultrium 3000 (half-height)
– EH958A, EH958B, EH958SB

Don’t know what the suffix mean.

I have an Atto R680 Host Bus Adaptor on the way that was included in a G-Technology storage system bundle. Planning on using this setup in combination with HP StoreOpen with LTFS software on Mac OS X 10.6 and 10.7. Also, will test on Windows 7 Pro via Bootcamp. If I’m not satisfied with the performance and workflow, then I will consider BRU PE.

[Mel Feliciano]

I would like to see:

1. Teranex with 2 thunderbolt ports for loop-through.

2. Breakout boxes for the Decklink producs like the ones offered
by AJA for the Kona cards. Way more elegant than the breakout
cable.

3. A real Multibridge replacement. You know, the concept of
having a simple PCIe card inside the tower and a nice breakout
box with all the IOs.

Now that I think about it. All they have to make is a Teranex that can work with all kind of computers; desktops, laptops, and all-in-one… Thunderbolt and PCIe. And don’t forget to make it compatible with DaVinci Resolve.

[Mel Feliciano]

I would not be surprised if it starts shipping by IBC (September). By then it will probably have some new features not previously announced. Maybe they will include an extra thunderbolt port (2) for daisy chain. Also, it would be nice if they add the option to hook it up to a non-thunderbolt computer such as the Mac Pro or HP Z820, you know, like the old Multibridge.

[Mel Feliciano]

I’m one of those Mac user customers who bought the Pioneer BDR-206 (OEM). This was about a year and a half ago, when I was still using Snow Leopard. The drive would dismount constantly, forcing me to open the MacPro and physically disconnect and reconnect the drive. After this, I had to reboot the computer and the drive would mount again. The problem was solved after I upgraded the drive firmware. Now I’m using Lion and I’m having the same problem again. I was hoping that a firmware upgrade would fix the problem but Pioneer has not released any more firmwares.

[Mel Feliciano]

IBC is only a couple of months away. I’m sure one of the new “major” announcements is going to be “DaVinci Resolve 9 is available today”; of course with a few new features to get everybody exited.

[Mel Feliciano]

Hopefully the next Intensity IO will have dual thunderbolt ports for loop-through, and the USB 3.0 version will be Mac OS X compatible. That way people will be able to connect all their devices on a Macbook Pro without being limited by the end point only solutions. The retina-display MBP with dual TB ports doesn’t have that limitation but you are limited in other ways; that’s why I chose the non-retina MBP.