[Neil Sadwelkar]

By the way, where in Pune are you?
I’m here too. At FTII.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Hari,

5h35m for 1.92 TB at 95 MB/sec is the kind of speed the LTO will write (with Yoyotta) if the drive feeding it is that slow. Writing Arriraw .ari file sequences or any kind of file sequences (DPX, TGA, TIFF, EXR etc) is generally slower then writing large files of the same size so that’s normal.

To give you a sense of the speed at which Yoyotta can copy and verify to a LTO-7 drive, here are excerpts from some of my logs

Copying Arriraw .ari files from a LaCie 2big RAID 0 drive (capable of about 300-350 MB/sec read)
Copy 4.98 TB in 5h 12m at 266 MB/s
Verify 4.98 TB in 8h 53m at 156 MB/s
Copy 5.16 TB in 5h 43m at 250 MB/s
Verify 5.16 TB in 8h 58m at 160 MB/s
Copy 5.23 TB in 5h 33m at 262 MB/s
Verify 5.23 TB in 10h 22m at 140 MB/s

Copying Arriraw .ari files from a LaCie 6big RAID 5 drive (capable of about 700-900 MB/sec read)
Copy 5.00 TB in 5h 18m at 262 MB/s
Verify 5.77 TB in 9h 30m at 168 MB/s

Copying mov and mxf files from a 4-bay Thunderbolt 2 RAID 5 (capable of 400-450 MB/sec)
Copy 1.52 TB in 1h 29m at 285 MB/s
Verify 1.52 TB in 2h 38m at 160 MB/s

So, the verify is generally slower than the copy. That’s normal.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Neil Sadwelkar]

I have two of these – Sonnet Echo Express SEL – one Thunderbolt 2 and the other Thunderbolt 3.
In one, I have an Atto SAS H680 and in the other an Atto SAS H1280.

This Sonnet model is a ‘low-profile’ PCIe card adapter, so make sure you have the low profile bracket with the SAS card. If you’re buying a new H680 or H1280, then it comes with a low profile adapter in the box.
And after you finish installing the card with the low profile bracket, keep the normal height bracket safely, just in case you need to later install it in a full height expander.

Your LTO drive may have shipped with a cable but that’s likely to be a SFF-8088 to SFF-8088 cable. That will work with the Atto H680, but for the H1280 you’ll need a SFF-8644 to SFF-8088 cable to hookup to the SAS LTO drive.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Here’s a comparison between the TVS-873e and the new TVS-872XT

https://www.qnap.com/en-in/product/contrast.php?cp%5B%5D=298&cp%5B%5D=357&ref=product_overview

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Neil Sadwelkar]

[Tim Gerhard] “but you need to take their location / time zone into account. Imagine Products are in Indiana USA, YoYotta is in the UK, and Hedge is in Amsterdam or something?”

This statement is for those currently in the USA. If you happen to be in India like me, then all are far away, with the US being the farthest, with a solid 9.5-12.5 hour time difference making any telephonic support a night long affair for any one side.

Regarding Hedge, I own 10 licenses of Hedge and just bought 3 of Canister. I’ve found Hedge support to be excellent and usually get a response within a few hours.
Similarly Tolis and Bru. I have three licenses, and I’ve not had too many issues that needed issues, and for the few that have, I usually get an e-mail response within a day or two.
And I have one license of Yoyotta ID LTFS. For which support from Martin has been excellent. Even though I’ve contacted him, not with issues with the software, but my lack of understanding how to use it and he’s been patient too.

I also bought a license of Imagine Preroll Post some years ago, but ran into a database problem when just starting a large feature rushes backup. A problem that didn’t get resolved so I stopped using that software and eventually abandoned it.

I have 4 LTO drives of my own and use two others at client establishments. And I backup to LTO about half a Petabyte annually.

When dealing with LTO, hardware support is sometimes more crucial than software support, as I’ve found often, hardware issues manifest themselves as software issues. And in this matter, support from Tandberg has been excellent at least here in India. Whereas the other tape hardware manufacturers are absent to non-existent in India.

A huge problem in India are high Customs tariffs and slow import/export procedures. So, anything needing shipping hardware back and forth is a huge no-no. So, if anyone said there were making an LTO drive and were US based, and their support needed sending a drive back and they would send a replacement same day, for us in India it would mean two week turnaround with a possible customs duty added.

So all of this support thing is pretty regional. There really is a huge world out there, and a lot of it is also outside the US.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Neil Sadwelkar]

In my short experience of writing LTO tapes from LTO-4 to the recent LTO-8, one of the enduring formats I’ve found is Bru-PE.

A client recently had to sell a TV show from the 2009-11 period which was then mastered as ProResHQ HD mov files to hard disk, and DigiBeta tapes as SD for telecast in 2009-11. When this show had to be sold again to an OTT platform as HD, the only files they could use were on LTO-4 tapes written with Bru-PE during that period.

We could open these on a recent LTO-6 drive and even with a newer version of Bru-PE and extract all of about 40 tapes. Hard drives of that period (G-drives and a G-StudioXL) refused to mount consistently enough to extract data off them. We didn’t have the catalog info for all the tapes, but reading the content info off the tape wasn’t difficult.

Of the same period, I had another client approach me with tapes written using Windows NTBackup. This format has been discontinued by Microsoft and newer versions of Windows from Win 7 onwards have no support for tape based NTBackup backups. I need to figure out setting up a working WinXP machine to help this client get his data back. Even after I do, I’m not sure, if, in the absence of any catalog info which gets saved on the Win system which wrote these NTBackup tapes, air all the data will ever be recovered.

Another client had tapes from earlier, which were written with Symantec Backup (according to them), but the newer version of this software they found, cannot retrieve that data.

So, while LTFS is probably more open and common now, and gain forward may be a better format to backup LTOs to, LTO tapes from about pre-2008 while still in good shape, but the means to extract data from them could be challenging.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Canister was in Beta for a while and is now a product. Going by Hedge’s reliability it should be a reliable product. It does save MHL checksums and keeps a database on disk. And it also handles bad filenames in and out. I’ve yet to use it extensively, but for small runs the beta worked flawlessly. I do own Preroll post and Yoyotta.

So, I’d say wherever you need extensive reports and a browsable database, then Yoyotta would be a better choice. But for ease of use, Canister is worth a look at.

This company makes an offload software called Hedge for Mac which I’ve been using on 9 systems for about a year and a half now. I must have offloaded a couple of petabytes from about 2 dozen feature films on set using Hedge. Its a fast offloader with a simple interface. And it does verification, saves MHL logs, and a human readable report file by file. Hedge is not as featured as Pomfort or Yoyotta, but simplicity is one of its key features. I own both and they have their uses.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Neil Sadwelkar]

There used to be an app that we used many years ago, called PictureReady, to edit shows in FCP 7 as they were being recorded to disk. I find that it still exists but can’t say if it works inside any NLE.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Neil Sadwelkar]

I’ve found Tandberg to have the best support, in Mumbai (India) at least. Tandberg are also IBM rebadged (at least some models are). Aim to get an LTO-8 drive if you don’t need compatibility with old LTO-6 tapes. If you do need to be able to read LTO-6 and LTO-5 tapes, then an LTO-7 drive is what you should get.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Just a thought.
Since you have a Mac system handy, why don’t you download a 30 day trial of software like Bru-PE or Yoyotta (both Mac only) and write the tape using these. Both these softwares have reporting and logging so you can then involve them in the troubleshooting. Even if there is a hardware issue, the logs will reveal that. Your SAS card should work in the Mac with drivers.

At the moment you’re on your own since IBM has disowned you (very common in India) since you’re out of warranty. And you’re doing a drag and drop copy to LTO which means you’re at the mercy of Windows.

In the long term using some dedicated software to write to LTO tapes is a more robust and stress free activity than staying late at the office struggling with these issues.

Also, as a point of info, (not that it matters in your case), but here in India I’ve found, Tandberg support is much better even years after the warranty expires. They have a guy here who knows his stuff and the company gets fully involved in finding a solution.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India