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???
10/03/10 03:09
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#178879 - Still missing examples, and "tiny unknown" biggest on market
Responding to: ???'s previous message
Richard said:
I've asked around about that HP "Ultrium" subsystem you mentioned, but nobody seems to know anything about it.

No, Richard. You have not asked around about it. Or you have asked the wrong people.

Ultrium - also known as LTO - are quite well-known. LTO is the technology and Ultrium is the form factor.

Richard said:
At only 200 GB, it's rather small for full system backups, however, which may explain why nobody knows it.

The technology you have failed to find anyone knowledgeable about is biggest on the market for large-capacity tape systems.

And they manage up to 800/1600 GB on a single tape, if Ultrium 4/LTO 4. 400/800GB with Ultrium/LTO 3. 200/400GB with Ultrium/LTO 2. 100/200GB with Ultrium/LTO 1. Brand new for this year is Ultrium/LTO 5 - 1500GB uncompressed. Nothing different from DAT - most users mentioning DAT do not consider the oldest 2/4GB DDS-1 generation.

If you look at a HP StorageWorks 1760 G2, you get 6.4TB uncompressed/12.8TB compressed in a 1U rack unit. Well within the requirements you randomly selected earlier. A HP StorageWorks MSL2024 LTO4 manages 19.2/38.4TB. Stand up and call that "rather small" if you feel like it, but then go for a 40-slot Tandberg with 32/64TB capacity. Then there is of course the newest - Ultrium/LTO 5 with 1.5/3.0TB / tape. Maybe a Spectra T-Finity system with 30520 slots of LTO-5 tapes? A ridiculously small 24 petabyte. A year ago, the total digital content in the world was estimated at 500EB, so 20000 such tape systems would have been enough to store all digital information for the whole world. Rather small, you say.

Richard said:
I've got limited confidence in USB-attached storage, BTW.

It really doesn't matter what you feel about USB-attached storage. You can get Ultrium units with SCSI or serial SCSI (SAS). I'm not sure if any manufacturer sells them with USB (at least anylonger) since LTO-1 does 15MB/s, LTO-2 does 40MB/s (above the limit for USB-2), LTO-3 does 80MB/s, LTO-4 does 120MB/s and the new LTO-5 does 140MB/s.

Richard said:
Though burst performance is good, the one of several USB-attached TB drives I've observed tends to go offline for minutes at a time, which approximately quadruples the transfer time of a comparable SATA drive.

We know that you can't for the life of you manage a USB system. Other people do not see any USB disks take minutes off. Do you keep it in an oven? It doesn't sound like a USB problem, but like a disk that reboots because of internal problems. I regularly copy TB amounts of data to/from USB disks without getting any stalls. So even if USB-2 isn't near SATA, SAS or similar, it is nowhere near as bad as you claim.

Richard said:
Now, these drives have an SATA channel and can work from that, too, but you know what my feeling about attaching backup to a system's rotating memory subsystem is.

Note that a number of large corporations are doing just that. Dropping their tape backup systems for RAID solutions with cheap SATA disks. Having RAID-6 with spare disks gives quite good security. The media cost of tape is lower, but the access times are a big advantage with the disk solutions.

But back to the issue - you have still not presented an example of a tape drive that is not designed to show up as a file system, but which Microsoft anyway displays as a file system. Haven't the people you asked around, been able to help you out with a good example yet?

And while busy giving examples - what systems do your friends use that makes the Ultrium systems seem so tiny?

List of 23 messages in thread
TopicAuthorDate
tape backup replacement            01/01/70 00:00      
   You may find it easier to roll-yer-own            01/01/70 00:00      
      Rubbish            01/01/70 00:00      
         Can you give an example ... just one?            01/01/70 00:00      
            Still not backing borked original claim with any facts            01/01/70 00:00      
            Where's your example? All you have to do is name it ...            01/01/70 00:00      
               HP Ultrium            01/01/70 00:00      
                  Where is the example Richard?            01/01/70 00:00      
                     I haven't found anyone who knows that product            01/01/70 00:00      
                        Still missing examples, and "tiny unknown" biggest on market            01/01/70 00:00      
            Talk to the Device MFG's            01/01/70 00:00      
   Before spying...            01/01/70 00:00      
      documentation            01/01/70 00:00      
         Don't despair!            01/01/70 00:00      
         Old Computer...            01/01/70 00:00      
   Something must be valuable            01/01/70 00:00      
      It's meant to be....            01/01/70 00:00      
         more info            01/01/70 00:00      
            Probably easy to take care of the CRC            01/01/70 00:00      
            So value is in system            01/01/70 00:00      
               Still much we don't know about this project            01/01/70 00:00      
                  Delays            01/01/70 00:00      
                     Take care            01/01/70 00:00      

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