[Tim Dowse]

Hi Neil,

This is funny timing. I did end up getting the package described at the top of the thread, but it just arrived a few days ago. The ATTO card installed and worked perfectly in my MacPro (from 2010, running 10.6.7).

The drive connected to the computer. I used the Tanderg LTFS to mount my first tape just a couple of days ago. It mounted fine. I copied about 900GB of files, and they all copied fine except there was an error message with the very last folder. Didn’t get to the bottom of what that was, but managed to copy one of the two files (the other was just a re-coding of the original file anyway, so I just left it at that). Unmounted fine. Now I need to get more tapes and see if the error message re-appears.

Sadly, I’m leaving my current position so won’t get to continue testing this. My advice to my successor will be to try a few more times with LTFS. If there are still issues, then BRU is the next choice.

The most important thing I guess is that the drive/card/computer combo works. If we need to spend another $500 on BRU so be it. Will make that decision later.

[Tim Dowse]

It’s the supplier that we have a state contract with. So I’m assuming it’s legit. Not sure why it’s that low.

I appreciate all your input on this issue, thanks Tim.

[Tim Dowse]

Tim Jones What kind of budget are you looking at? Our LTO-4 solution is still very viable (800GB/tape at ~90MB/sec) and the full bundle price including BRU PE is $2,699

I can get the bundle at the top of this thread for just over $1800. I know people will laugh at how little I want to spend, and if I was working in my own shop it would be a different story… but I can’t stretch to $2700… the money just isn’t there (I don’t control budgets where I work).

[Tim Dowse]

Bob Zelin HOW COME YOU HAVE NOT TRIED IT ?

I have not tried it because I don’t have an LTO drive. I downloaded and installed the software, and it opened. So that much is good.

I am trying to figure out (given the money I have available) whether I can “get away with” a tandberg LTO-5 drive and free software. If not, then I’ll need to spend on BRU, meaning that I’ll have to get an older drive like LTO-1 or 2. I’d prefer a bigger capacity cartridges and open-source formatting if I can get it to work.

[Tim Dowse]

Tim Jones “I” have over 30 years involved in system backup operations and using tape in its various formats.

which is experience I really wish I had at this point… And I very much appreciate you taking the time to answer my concerns. I am obviously a newbie, but I do like to take on new things, and I flatter myself that I’m a fast learner. Having read your earlier list of caveats to LTFS, they all seem like things I could work around. The only exception being the unavailability of validation. If there’s good evidence that LTFS-based writing to tape was error prone, then I’d be majorly concerned.

Tim Jones if you are in the middle of a BRU-based backup and you lose power, you can recover everything that was written to the tape up to the point of power loss. With LTFS, you’ve lost the whole tape’s contents – even stuff that was successfully written previously to that tape.

This is an interesting point. But for this to happen, I will need two have two simultaneous hard drive failures, followed by a power loss while I attempt to restore the drive. One hopes that this is an extremely unlikely occurrence. In the three years I’ve been working here we’ve had one power outage. I mean, one can always think of circumstances where all data is lost – but one has to draw the line somewhere. At this point I’m not archiving to tape at all, so it will be a big step just to add that to my current storage system.

Tim Jones so run with LTFS for a while. If you do determine that you need more, while I can’t speak to the other solutions, BRU will be here to help you out.

And I will gladly eat large helpings of humble pie while you repeatedly tell me “I told you so” 🙂 Seriously, thanks for your input, I really do appreciate it. And for what it’s worth, BRU is basically the only paid for option I’ve even considered, so I would be coming straight in your direction.

[Tim Dowse]

Tim Jones That’s like saying that $999 for an NLE is a lot for such simple functionality as an editing suite.

I think it’s more like comparing a pro NLE to iMovie. If someone asked me what software to use to take one clip, put it next to another one, and then export for youtube, I would recommend iMovie, despite me using PP everyday for work. If I don’t need BRU’s excellent functionality, is it not reasonable to look for cheaper solutions?

Tim Jones Remember, you’re paying for the free-ness of LTFS by taking full responsibility for its operation if something doesn’t work.

I understand that. I know a better user experience and customer service has a value. I’m trying to do some kind of cost-benefit analysis – and at this point I remain unsure as to whether the benefits of BRU are worth the cost.

[Tim Dowse]

Thanks for your input everybody. This feels like such a murky, dark underworld to the uninitiated.

Bob Zelin I am not aware of any free solutions that works on Mac OS X – period.

I thought that this was the Tandberg free LTFS solution. Is that not right? (he said trembling, preparing to be publicly humiliated)

Kevin Francis That is the cheap way to go, but I think if you tried it awhile you’d be disappointed.

What do you mean disappointed exactly? I can deal with clunky and slow, but obviously not so much with complete failure. I do understand that LTFS has limitations, but literally all I want to do is clone hard drives to tape, and put tapes on the shelf until such time as two hard-drives simultaneously fail, when I will restore from the tape archive.

Having read about the potential issues of trying to copy multiple files at the same time, I intend to make disk images, and copy the whole image file to tape. I have a machine sitting around that can do this in the background, so it won’t slow my work down at all really.

Just seems like $500 for such simple functionality is a lot, especially when LTFS at least on paper will do this for free. I won’t be doing this every day… perhaps something more like once a month.

[Tim Dowse]

Hi Tim,

Thanks for this info – I appreciate you taking the time to answer my question. The thing is you guys have an incentive to steer people away from LTFS – do you have any non-TOLIS resources that I could read? It’s like reading a Microsoft article about the limitations of googledocs 😉

I can see that LTFS is limited compared with BRU, but I’m not sure I need all the functionality that BRU offers. I have a very limited amount of money to spend (I don’t control the budgets where I work, and a little extra cash appeared out of nowhere), and I would like to get tape-based archive. An extra $500 for BRU might be out of reach – I might be able to justify it, but I need a little more info to go on.

The only issue in that list that really concerns me is no verification.

Tim Jones Backup and archival should be all about restoring your data, and restoring means that the data had to be written to the tape in a reliable manner to start with.

Clearly you are right of course. Is there information specifically about the unreliability of writing to LTFS tapes because that isn’t addressed in your link directly.

[Tim Dowse]

Well, sometimes it’s one screen, and sometimes the other, so wouldn’t that suggest it’s not the card (each screen is connected to a different card). It only seems to happen when CS apps are open… I’ve not noticed whether or not it is restricted to only when PrPro is open, but it could be.

[Tim Dowse]

Well, my little problem has returned. Any other suggestions?