Storage solution

[franciscofossa]

Hi folks!
I've made some research by myself, but i need some extra advice from the experts, or anyone who had the same problem as mine:
Here we are: External zip, zip2 or even jaz drives, connected in parallel port has become a major problem for me, because of the amount of data.
I need one external, easy connected (USB or parallel), tape drive, for at least 20Gb tapes (the more, the better) i need that configuration to be RELIABLE, not necessary FAST, it needs to work with Windows, Mac and Linux.
It can't be SCSI, (it's a shame, I know)
It can't be external harddrives. Removable media is the only way.
The one and only thing in the market closely to this is a travan 10/20 Gb external USB drive (Seagate) some 350$. Has anybody prove it? Price and performance seems to be right for me, but again, that's the ONLY offer from ANY hardware manufacturers. Or do i need to look further?
It would be nice if i can access the drive with some bootable diskette. Any experience?
Someone told me i can try an external USB 2.0 adaptor for IDE drives (CD-ROM, CD-RW, HD, even DVD) and anything on internal IDE inside. That's sound right for me too, even better, but i don't know which IDE tape drive should be better for this. Is there any at all? Has anyone ANY idea?
Thank you
PS It's not my first time in this forum, it's just that i forgot login everytime, and i'm working in many places.

 

[CougTek]

Take a look at their products : Ontream.

A few years ago, their ADR tapes were quite popular and they were relatively fast back then. I figure they must still have something competitive nowadays. A quick look at their ADR2 tells me that it might be what you are looking for.

 

[CougTek]

I was talking about this one in particular.

 

[Cliptin]

I was talking about this one in particular.

I acn't find where it works with Mac and linux.

 

[Buck]

Just a question Francisco, why can't you use an external HDD like FireWire or USB?

 

[Mercutio]

Poking around Onstream's site, I see that Onstream offers support for both Linux and Macintosh.

I've heard negative things about reliability for Onstream products, though.

 

[James]

I've heard good things about them, and the one I had for a couple of years was solid. I mean, it's not a Quantum DLT, but it's a crapload cheaper too.

 

[Tea]

Hmmm ... At US$350 plus the cost of tapes, that's not exactly good value for money. But the tape drive market is getting more and more high-end-only these days, mainly because of the advent of CD-R. And high-end or not, tape drives always were trully horrible things. Worse than Zip drives.

(Tea!)

(Well. Fair enough, Tannin. I admit it.You got me there. I better retract.)

Ahem. Please accept my apologies, everyone. Nothing is worse than Zip drives. But tape drives come pretty close.

Buy yourself a whole pile of 5400 RPM 40GB hard drives, Francisco, and a USB box to put them in. Believe me, anything is better than tape drives.

(Ahem.)

Er ... Except Zip drives, of course.

 

[time]

I agree with Tea and Tannin. Tapes only make real sense now for truly humungous data backup.

From your negativity towards an external hard disk, I presume you want to keep a fair number of different backups. Let's look at the costs (which may or may not be the best US prices, but I'm hoping they're typical).

I assume you realize that tapes are usually quoted at twice (or even thrice) their actual capacity? I'm going to ignore compression and refer to their native capacity.

Tapes and cost per GB

DDS-3 12GB $ 8 (67c)
DDS-4 20GB $16 (80c)
DLT-III 10GB $30 ($3)
DLT-IV 40GB $60 ($1.50)
AIT-1 25GB $55 ($2.20)
AIT-2 50GB $75 ($1.50)
ADR2 30GB $60 ($2.00)
TR-5 10GB $40 ($4)

HDD 80GB $100 ($1.25)

External Drives (approx)

DDS-3 $750
DDS-4 $1000
DLT-IV $1500 (if you can find one with USB)
AIT-1 $1500
AIT-2 $2500
ADR2 $650
TR-5 $350

HDD Firewire setup $100

So a Travan solution with 100GB (ten tapes) will cost $750. ADR2 with 120GB (4 tapes) $890.

On the other hand, if you used two 80GB hard drives with companion firewire enclosures, you would get 160GB for $400. Substituting three 40GB drives would cost an extra $100. Alternating between two or more drives keeps your risk at the same level as tape.

Of course, hard disk drives are a hell of a lot more reliable than any of these tape solutions. They're not susceptible to normal magnetic fields, humidity, temperature or dust, and are more resistant to shock.

 

[Fushigi]

If the systems are networked, use 80GB drives as time suggests, but add them to one of the systems in a removeable IDE drive enclosure (about $17). Share the volume & have the different systems dump their data to it. Then pull it out & take it off-site as needed. Cost: 2 80GB drives: $160 (CompUSA has them for $80 right now), 2 drive enclosures: Not more than $40. Performance: As fast as your LAN. I'm assuming 2 drives so you can alternate backups. You could get away with just 1 drive or do a real grandfather-father-son setup & go with three drives.

If the systems are not networked but are in the same area, build a network (about $17/system + cables & hub).

If they can't be networked, go with time's suggestion.

- Fushigi

 

[franciscofossa]

thank you

thank you time, you really convinced me. Money talks!
And now any of you guys knows which firewire enclosure works good with linux, windows, mac, IDE bus of course, prices of harddrives are very atractive today. USB or parallel port is mandatory too... NO SCSI (I know it's a shame, but it's not my fault)
I explain:
We are transfering some large amount of data, primordialy compressed video and VERY large dbase files and all kind of office files and pictures, among machines with linux and windows. Mac is only optional, i want to leave it as an option too.
We do it by direct connection, but that doesn't work right all the time and we lost a lot of server time that way. It happens to be cheaper to send some guy to do the way only in case the automatic data tranfer fails.
It cost too much if we put some guy just keeping an eye all night on the data tranfer. Our system has been fully optimized to work automatic without any supervision. Again, money talks!
We do our main backup somewhere else with other media. CD or DVD burning is out of question. It needs to be something removable.
thanks

 

[Buck]

Francisco,

Visit this website and give them a call about your situation.
http://www.granitedigital.com/catalog/index.htm

 

[hoggy]

Do not buy a Onstream tape drive. I have one (never use it anymore) and have had nothing but problems. It's absolutely useless and so slow. At least the DI30 FAST is. In fact I wouldn't even consider selling it. Could not, would not do that to anyone.
hog

 

[James]

No tape solution is particularly fast. If you've ever used Tarvan or QiK tape drives, the Onstream stuff seems lightning fast in comparison.

 

[time]

Travan TR-5 isn't that slow, James, although probably still the slowest current tape solution out there. At 120MB/min (compressed), the throughput is definitely limited by USB 1.0.

Now QIC, that's a different story altogether!

If I had to choose between TR-5 and DDS-3 for my own use, I'd feel a lot safer with the Travan solution.

 

[time]

I also don't agree that "no tape solution is particularly fast".

http://rss.seagate.com/products/srssDrives/ultriumMain.html

32MB per second isn't bad.

 

[CougTek]

I also don't agree that "no tape solution is particularly fast".

http://rss.seagate.com/products/srssDrives/ultriumMain.html

32MB per second isn't bad.

It might be fast, but I would have a slight problem to justify the 4995U$.

 

[time]

Don't sweat it, Coug. Pretty soon the USD will only be worth 2 cents anyway.

 

[James]

I also don't agree that "no tape solution is particularly fast".

http://rss.seagate.com/products/srssDrives/ultriumMain.html

32MB per second isn't bad.

True, but I'd have a hard time justifying that kind of expenditure in most cases. My backup requirements are such that I have some recovery SLA to meet (usually 4 hours) and a pile of data to restore (some hundreds of GB or several TB, whatever). Under those circumstances tape simply isn't fast enough, I have to end up using a backup arrays of disks using a box from NetApp or similar.

It's hard for me to see what Seagate's target market is - it's not fast enough for the really high end and too expensive for the lower end. The speed is unappealing for the middle market too, and the cost prohibitive.

 

[James]

Travan TR-5 isn't that slow, James, although probably still the slowest current tape solution out there. At 120MB/min (compressed), the throughput is definitely limited by USB 1.0.

Now QIC, that's a different story altogether!

If I had to choose between TR-5 and DDS-3 for my own use, I'd feel a lot safer with the Travan solution.

I see I managed to misspell both company names from memory, glad you could extract my meaning despite this.

Admittedly my last experience with Travan was several years ago, ditto with QIC. However, you're right - my statement should have been qualified properly : if you are a home user, used to hard drives, any tape solution you can afford will seem ungodly slow.

 

[Mercutio]

Perhaps the market for that ultrium deck is simply a high-end professional user?

I spent some quality time with my ex's cousin this weekend, who owns one of two major recording studios in Minnesota (the other is owned by "Mr. Unpronouncable" Prince). We spent awhile talking about some stuff of interest to the Vacuum tube thread but even longer talking about his storage needs. CDs aren't big enough, DVD is way too slow, SCSI drives (he buys the 180GB monsters) aren't removable but have the size and speed. I sold him on some firewire enclosures for his next IT expenditure.

32MB/minute at those tape capacities would do him just about right, though.
I'm sure there are tons and tons of other data-heavy applications (studio recording, medical imaging etc) where Ultrium could be useful.

 

[Cliptin]

There is a technical name for it but it slips the mind right now. I doubt your new client would like the search time. That device might stream 32 but I wonder how long it would take to find a single project. You were talking about working from the tape, right?

 

[time]

I don't think he was, but in any case Seagate quotes an average file access time of 76 seconds.

Did anyone check out Seagate's 2.2TB Ultrium autoloader? Awesome reliability numbers.

I'm not sure I follow your argument, James. AFAIK, this is the fastest single tape system around. Just like your HDD array, you would need to have more than one of these in any large scale backup system. Is it the cumulative cost?

 

[James]

Sure, but at least you can stripe a file across drives. How do you do that with tape? It's not like you can retrieve multiple parts of the file off multiple tapes simultaneously.

Errr, that is to say I haven't come across a system that does that yet, anyway.