Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2010/03/25
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I don't really know much about this, bit at my old corporate job they did tape backup of the servers and they may as well not have done it. It was impossible to get anything off the tape unless you knew the filename and write date. There was no way, we were told, to search the tape. Has that changed in tapeworld? Leo Wesson photographer?videographer leo at leowesson.com 817?733?9157 On Mar 25, 2010, at 5:06 AM, Dennis <dennis at hale-pohaku.com> wrote: > Hi Spencer, > > I think we may want to put this over to the Imagestore list, but. > > At some point, say over 10TB, and growing, I think you are reaching > a point of diminishing returns using disc drives for backup and/or > archiving. Managing a lot of disc drives manually becomes a tedious > and error prone task. This is where automation can be your friend. > John's tape library is more than I would expect a photographer to > need but I would want a library that accepts at least two drives in > order to migrate data to the next generation media. Typically these > libraries are attached to servers. I am not sure but expect that you > can run them on a unix or windows system, not sure about Mac. > > It's likely that you will need a server to keep up with the > performance of the drive. LTO 4 can write data at speed of up to 120 > MB/s.I don't think windows desktop can serve up that data rate. The > drive can stream at lower data rates but obviously the backup will > take longer. > > The LTO format is very reliable. They are not designed to be > consumer products, the typical customer is going to be a large > corporation that expects and gets a reliable product. The media life > that John quoted sounds like the spec to me. Once you write data to > the tape you should never have to check it. If you want I can > discuss the read after write that occurs in real time when data is > written, the error correction that is part of the LTO specification, > and, importantly the servo tracking that is important to ensuring > data written can be read back on another drive. Keep in mind that > the major drive manufactures are HP, IBM, and Quantum (Quantum > acquired its seat as one of the technology providers of the LTO > Consortium when Quantum bought Certance, a spin off from Seagate) > > Backup software is going to be selected from the library vendors > list of qualified vendors. > > Goodnight, > Dennis > > > Spencer Cheng wrote: >> John, (& Dennis), >> >> Suppose you are a working pro like Tina, Leo or Ted, or..., and you >> have a gazillion digital photos, what would you buy for tape >> backups? Assume that it has to work with a PC and a Mac, though not >> at the same time. >> >> How reliable are these tapes? How frequently do they have to be >> replaced? How often do the content have to checked? What S/W should >> they use? Is there a recommended backup schedule? >> >> I've came across cases where the tape drive was flakey and the tape >> was blank. I also seen tape drive s/w that generates hundreds of >> (transient?) errors when I worked for a small company and we used >> tapes for backups. >> >> More fodder for the wiki but I think this is useful information to >> capture because once one data needs exceed 2TB, commodity NASes >> becomes a bit of a dead end. Even my home brew NAS becomes less >> useful once it gets to >3TB. Having a stack of NASes is no better >> than a stack of external disks (or a very large stack of DVD-R). >> >> Regards, >> Spencer >> >> On Mar 24, 2010, at 12:52, John Nebel wrote: >> [...] >> >>> Relevant to the LUG: Given the high value of photographic images, >>> and low cost of media and a PC internal tape drive, tape archiving >>> is cost-effective. There can be many backup copies and tapes may >>> be kept in multiple locations. >>> >>> Disk redundancy is essential, but one must do both. >>> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Leica Users Group. >> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information