[Tim Jones]

Hi Bob,

The Desktop version is simply the standalone external drive in a half-height enclosure. The Desktop Cube is in our new Quiet Cube (over 40% quieter than the half height), and can be expended to include 2 drives instead of 1 making later expansion to a desktop-capable Doubler Station less costly than 2 separate external half-height units.

Plus, the new Cube’s look is “Too Hip” in it’s Orange and Black color scheme :-).

Tim
—
Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters!

[Tim Jones]

Before getting my rMBP, I used an i7 Mac Book Air 4GB with an external OWC Express USB 2.0 bus-powered enclosure with an OCZ 240GB Vertex 3 SSD. Worked well on the plane, in the hotel, and when connected to my 24″ LED monitors at the office.

I ran FCP X, Motion, PP and AE very respectably.

Should run you around $1,700 for the newer 2GHz i7, 8GB MBA (you could save $100 there with the i5 CPU) and around $200 for the external SSD and you get the bullet-proof Apple quality.

Tim
—
Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters!

[Tim Jones]

That wasn’t to imply that the other solutions were any less supported, just that we found the HP solutions more in line with the level of support and reliability that we need to provide our customers. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.

Tim
—
Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters!

[Tim Jones]

Hmmm, BRU PE and BRU Server are compatible with 10.7 and 10.8 out of the box. No fancy manual configuration required…

Just sayin’

Tim
—
Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters!

[Tim Jones]

Hi Neil,

I’m not sure where you got that info from, but BRU PE will work fine with both brands. However, if you’re looking for another drive, we have great deals for existing users. Drop a note to our sales team (or give a call – 480-505-0488) and they’ll get back to you with pricing.

Tim
—
Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters!

[Tim Jones]

Unfortunately, Marshall, you will need to familiarize yourself with the basics of Terminal operations to get all of this to work consistently.

1: You should NEVER have an admin account with no password (on any system). This is why your sudo call fails. Assign a password to that account and it will work as described.

2: /Volumes is not visible in Finder, you’ll only see it in the Terminal unless you work some serious magic.

To See the /Volumes folder:
ls -l /Volumes
To create the mount point folder (replace ltfsvol with whatever folder name you prefer):
sudo mkdir /Volumes/ltfsvol
To properly mount the ltfs tape:
sudo /usr/local/bin/ltfs -o devname=0 /Volumes/ltfsvol

3: The other problems are caused by the fact that the mount point must exist before ltfs can mount a volume at the location.

Regardless of what your boss has achieved on Windows or Linux, OS X does not work the same way. Apple has a different filesystem layout and if you step outside of their defined paths, you’ll not get what you expect.

Tim
—
Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters!

[Tim Jones]

Isn’t manual LTFS handling fun 😉 ?

A couple of things that I see –

• On the Mac, your mount point should be /Volumes, not /mnt or your desktop.

• You must use sudo to manually create the mount point.

• You must use sudo to mount with the ltfs command.

• You will need to match settings for the tape to be properly handled by your copy of the LTFS tools, so you will need to know how the original tape was formatted (blocksize, sync type, etc).

There are other tools out there that will allow you to make better use of your LTO-5 drive (performance and ease of access) than trying to hack your way through the manual LTFS tools. Our BRU Producer’s Edition is one of those tools.

Tim
—
Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters!

[Tim Jones]

With LTO, it’s pretty clear cut and the biggest issue is the track width and density on the tapes. After a while, the track width to head width ratio becomes so large that the result is that the later model head is reading noise rather than data.

Imagine if you’re driving down a one lane road – pretty easy to keep your vehicle in the track. Expand that to a two lane road with no lines and you can still pretty much stay to one side or the other. Now, expand that the 10 lanes wide with what appear to be random lane markers. It would be very tough to stay in a “lane”. However, if your vehicle were ten times wider, you’re back to the original parameters – easy to stay in your lane and the random lines are just something to roll over.

There was a discussion of a custom assembly that would offer two sets of heads and more reel speeds, but the cost became so prohibitive that it is more cost effective to purchase two different devices. As a matter of point, you can still purchase an LTO-2 pCSCI and SAS drive today.

Taking it a step further, if you use BRU as your high level tape format, you can even copy the data directly from one technology to another meaning that you could readily migrate your LTO-3 tapes to LTO-8 (in 2020) without a need to re-archive the data. This is one of the ways that we protect against technology obsolescence. You could even migrate from tape to those little colored chips form the original Star Trek when they become available :-).

Tim
—
Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters!

[Tim Jones]

With LTO, it’s pretty clear cut and the biggest issue is the track width and density on the tapes. After a while, the track width to head width ratio becomes so large that the result is that the later model head is reading noise rather than data.

Imagine if you’re driving down a one lane road – pretty easy to keep your vehicle in the track. Expand that to a two lane road with no lines and you can still pretty much stay to one side or the other. Now, expand that the 10 lanes wide with what appear to be random lane markers. It would be very tough to stay in a “lane”. However, if your vehicle were ten times wider, you’re back to the original parameters – easy to stay in your lane and the random lines are just something to roll over.

There was a discussion of a custom assembly that would offer two sets of heads and more reel speeds, but the cost became so prohibitive that it is more cost effective to purchase two different devices. As a matter of point, you can still purchase an LTO-2 pCSCI and SAS drive today.

Taking it a step further, if you use BRU as your high level tape format, you can even copy the data directly from one technology to another meaning that you could readily migrate your LTO-3 tapes to LTO-8 (in 2020) without a need to re-archive the data. This is one of the ways that we protect against technology obsolescence. You could even migrate from tape to those little colored chips form the original Star Trek when they become available :-).

Tim
—
Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters!

[Tim Jones]

Two tape drives (or a 2 drive library), use BRU PE’s Doubler mode – write the same data to the two drives simultaneously.

Tim
—
Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters!