Tom Goldberg
Forum Replies Created
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Bob, I totally agree that any way you can get your content onto data tape, you are better protected than with hard drives. But, I’d have to take issue with your statement:
[Bob Cole] “add it to the PC, hook into your Mac via the network, and you’re done”What software are you going to use to write to that tape? How are you going to keep track of what content you put on what tape. The challenges associated with finding and recovering a single clip from your archive in such a solution make the effort questionable.
I’d also ask, how long did it take you to source that tape drive? To install it with appropriate drivers? To install and get up and running on your archive software? How much did that software cost? How long to develop an adequate workflow that gets your edit workstation content onto that PC? How much time and effort to archive a complete project? How much is your time worth?
We call this a “roll your own” archiving solution, and I’ve written a white paper that goes into the approach in more depth (go here to get your copy). Yes, $6k is a lot of money for our entry LTO-4 product, but it solves all of these issues with a single appliance-like box that connects to your network, gives you a dead simple drag-and-drop means to archive anything, keeps track of every file on every one of your tapes, and lets you get back that single clip almost as easily as if it were on a hard drive.
Tom Goldberg
Cache-A Corporation
602 Park Point Drive
Golden, CO 80401
mailto:tom.goldberg@cache-a.com
https://cache-a.com -
Hi Scott,
Kinda hard to tell what is going on from your description, are you restoring to our drives, to a mounted network share, or where? Regardless, I’m sure we can help you out. Please contact our support group as outlined on our support web page.
Tom Goldberg
Cache-A Corporation
602 Park Point Drive
Golden, CO 80401
mailto:tom.goldberg@cache-a.com
https://cache-a.com -
Just a note that Cache-A will be debuting a new plugin for Final Cut Server at NAB written by the bright lads at GWH&A
Tom Goldberg
Cache-A Corporation
602 Park Point Drive
Golden, CO 80401
mailto:tom.goldberg@cache-a.com
https://cache-a.com -
Bob,
We publish a revised manual with every software release and install it on every system with the update. We also will email a copy to anyone who requests it. Your point that it should be posted on our web site is reasonable and we will consider doing so.
-Tom
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Cache-A here… Thank you Bob for helping to spread the word about our products. I’d like to clear up a few minor points here.
How does it handle backups larger than included hard drive?
Users can archive directly to tape from network attached storage or from volumes plugged directly into our systems over USB, eSATA or FireWire (USB only on Prime). This allows a single action to archive a volume of any size spanning as many tapes as required. And, oh by the way, that 20-60GB session note in the manual is out of date – we now handle this automatically behind the scenes (as of v1.2.3 – Bob, please be sure you have this release).
What metadata is available in the searchable user-interface?
In addition to file, folder and tape names, we allow users to add 2 free-form text fields worth of virtually unlimited text to tag any file or folder and to be included in user searches. You can even add metadata to files in the catalog and it will be added back into that tape’s TOC (table of contents) when the system next sees it. These facilities will be enhanced further in future releases.
“according to Cache-A, the LTO4 tapes are completely compatible with other LTO 4 appliances”
Unfortunately this is not the case. To the best of my understanding, Bru, like Retrospect, BackupExec and most other back-up applications, write in a proprietary format that can not be read without the software used to write it.
Our tapes are written with the Unix/Linux standard tar format – this means that they can be read by any other system that support POSIX tar (which is any Linux/Unix computer or Macs/PCs with appropriate software installed). Further, we can only automatically read tapes written in another Cache-A system. It is possible to use a Cache-A to read a tar tape from non-Cache-A devices, but this requires a trip to terminal land. Please see our support page for tech briefs on this topic.Charles, I’m sorry our costs are so high down under, but I can assure you that our distributor there, Intraware, can provide excellent support should you have any problems.
Tom Goldberg
Cache-A Corporation
30201 Rainbow Hill Road
Evergreen, CO 80439
mailto:tom.goldberg@cache-a.com
https://cache-a.com