200GB+ tape drive solutions?

[Toshi1873]

We have around 135GB of compressed data that needs to be backed up. So
we're looking at the prices of the tape drives that can store 200GB
native per tape. We think that we're narrowed down to the following
solutions.

LTO Ultrium 2 (200GB) - $2000-$2400/drive, $60/tape
AIT-4 (200GB) - $2700/drive, $65/tape
SDLT600 (300GB) - $3200-$3500/drive, $100/tape

Are there any other tape technologies that we don't know about? The
Ultrium2 drives and media seem to offer a very good price.

We've had so-so luck with our AIT-2 drive. So we're leery of AIT-4.

 

[Ed Cayce]

I suggest removable SATA hard drives. Get a SATA controller that
supports hot-swap (just about any of them do, esp a RAID card) for $45,
a removable SATA enclosure is like, $50, the spare trays are $15 each,
and you can get 200 GB SATA hard drives for $99.

BackupExec supports "Backup to Removable Disk" natively; I think a
number of other backup packages have similar support, incluiding the
W2003S "backup" utility.

Your backups will fly compared to tape, and so will your restores.
Hard drives are pretty durable these days, especially if you use an
aluminum or steel tray rather than plastic. I used the KingWin KF-91
removable enclosure - its aluminum and has a built in fan as well.

An added bonus is that your backup system's capacity expands along with
the new hard drives that come out on the market. 1 TB drives are
expected to show up and be affordable in the next 12-18 months. Also,
its a real hard drive, so you can copy files directly to it, even over
the network. I have workstations that GHOST themselves directly to my
backup drive. They can even do it while the server backup job is
running!

Hard drives don't get stretched tape, don't need a head cleaning
cartridge, and because they are in a steel box they are resistant to
being demagnetized. I have yet to insert one and have it whir for 10
minutes and then tell me it can't be recognized.

I recently got rid of our old tape devices and moved to removable SATA
and I could not be happier. I will never go back to tape.

Email me edgar -at- medtek.net for some tips on how to set up some
simple scripts for mounting/dismounting the drive when swapping it.

 

[Odie Ferrous]

I suggest removable SATA hard drives. Get a SATA controller that
supports hot-swap (just about any of them do, esp a RAID card) for $45,
a removable SATA enclosure is like, $50, the spare trays are $15 each,
and you can get 200 GB SATA hard drives for $99.

You recommend "SATA" drives - period?

Ok, so what about Maxtor SATA drives? They fail left, right and
centre? Or perhaps Western Digital, who also have issues?

Ed, you have absolutely no idea. Or is it the "SATA" that floats your
boat? And what sort of RAID card can be purchased for £45??? Mickey
Mouse would have something to say about that.

If the user needs to backup to hard disk, they should be using RAID 1
and preferably Seagate drives. A hot-swap would also be a good idea.
essential, even. And, no - not "any of them" support hot swap.

Backing up to "SATA" drives when it involves Maxtor or Western Digital
is probably the same as throwing your backups into the ocean when the
tide is high.

God help any company that you might be advising.


Odie

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Odie,

His name is Duncan.

I am not sure where all the hostility is coming from.

He probably butchered some client's data.

I hope you can get some help with your anger issues.

He got that covered. He has me for that.
I probably was away too long so he had to find someone else to unload.

I am not trying to sell anything, so no, I don't recommend any specific
Serial ATA drive. Drives being used as backup devices see pretty light
duty - less than they would get being a main drive in a workstation,
much less than they would get in a server.

So actually they are not used as intended to be used.

They are going to spend most of their lifetimes sitting on a shelf,
powered down.

But may also be going from warm to cold and cold to warm environments.

You swap them in & out of your machine like you would a tape cartridge.

And may be abused as such.

I said SATA because the Serial ATA specification is designed for hot
swap,

and no special hardware is needed for it.

Actually there is.

And I have seen lots of SATA controllers that support it.

That's not the point. The point is your drives.

If you put them in trays you disable the (mechanical/electrical) *HOT* swap features of the SATA connector unless your trays are
hot-swap too.
If you want hot-swap, you need the backplane type trays that just put rails on drives and nothing more.

 

[Ed Cayce]

Odie,

I am not sure where all the hostility is coming from. I hope you can
get some help with your anger issues.

I am not trying to sell anything, so no, I don't recommend any specific
Serial ATA drive. Drives being used as backup devices see pretty light
duty - less than they would get being a main drive in a workstation,
much less than they would get in a server. They are going to spend
most of their lifetimes sitting on a shelf, powered down. You swap
them in & out of your machine like you would a tape cartridge.

I said SATA because the Serial ATA specification is designed for hot
swap, and no special hardware is needed for it. And I have seen lots
of SATA controllers that support it. Here's one for $14:
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16815124006
Mostly good reviews except one guy who seems to not know what he is
doing.
Its not to be used as a primary RAID, its just to control a removable
drive.

I have had no issues using Serial ATA removable drives, and don't see
any reason to use expensive SCSI hardware for drives that are just
being used as a big data dump.

YMMV.

 

[Arno Wagner]

You recommend "SATA" drives - period?

Ok, so what about Maxtor SATA drives? They fail left, right and
centre? Or perhaps Western Digital, who also have issues?

Ed, you have absolutely no idea. Or is it the "SATA" that floats your
boat? And what sort of RAID card can be purchased for £45??? Mickey
Mouse would have something to say about that.

If the user needs to backup to hard disk, they should be using RAID 1
and preferably Seagate drives. A hot-swap would also be a good idea.
essential, even. And, no - not "any of them" support hot swap.

Actually my impression is that most do not support hot-swap from the
software side. Of course the connector and interface electronics
do but that does not help too much by itself.

For reliable and not too expensive hot-swap you may need to use
USB drives for the time being. That means IDE and yes, Seagate
(or Samsung IMO). Make sure the disks are cooled well and
handled with care.

Arno

 

[Odie Ferrous]

His name is Duncan.


He probably butchered some client's data.


He got that covered. He has me for that.
I probably was away too long so he had to find someone else to unload.

Ah, Folkert.

Your dulcet tones envelop me with a warm sense of well-being and the
anger / angst merely seeps away.

Perhaps I need some kematherapy!


Odie

 

[Ed Cayce]

Folkert, you have some good points - there may be some stresses on the
drives in that they are being powered down, cooling off and warming
back up again. But I don't see much difference between that and being
used in a workstation that gets turned off nightly. Of course, if you
take the drives out of a hot machine and put them in a refrigerator,
that could be a problem.

The enclosure I use has a built in fan, and I find that the drives are
not even warm when removed. The tray does not even have its own
connector - the back end of the drive is flush,. so that the drive's
connector mates with a standard Serial ATA plug in the enclosure. I
suppose this is what you mean by a backplane type tray. It als has a
key switch that powers down the drive before you remove it - I always
give them a little time to spin down before pulling them out. I have
not seen any problems with hot swapping the drives.

Now, Windows has to be prepared before just pulling out a drive - I do
this using a script that tells diskpart.exe to dismount the volume -
this ensures that the cache has been flushed and there are no open
handles on the drive. A similar script re-mounts the volume after
inserting it. I just run the scripts from a batch file on the desktop
- but if you knew when you were going to swap the drives, you can
schedule the mounting/dismounting. You could do something similar with
other operating systems if Windows is not your OS.

Also, yes you must treat the drives a little more carefully than tapes.
When taking them off-site, we put them in a padded case - the same
type you might use to store guns, etc.

I have not lost any data, have not seen any errors when chkdsk'ing the
drives, and Windows 2003 has never shown any errors in the system logs.
Furthermore my test restores of data have all gone flawlessly and,
might I add, much swifter than they have with tape.

No system is perfect. There is always the chance of one of your backup
devices failing - that is why you back up to several "media" over time
and do it regularly, just like tape. But, in the case of tape, it
often can be the tape drive itself that fails - leaving you with no way
to restore your data until the drive is replaced. I have also found in
the past that tape drives will often happily, silently, write bad data
to a tape, leaving you with garbage when it is time to restore. Or,
the drive will write (and verify) tapes that only _it_ can read - and
when it fails and you replace it with an identical model, you find none
of your tapes are readable.

When the drive is working, you can only restore using the machine that
has the tape drive installed. Of course you can pull it out & move it
to another machine - but, that assumes you and the tape drive are in
the same location. Restoring data from a hard drive can be done on any
machine that has a Serial ATA controller, which is most machines built
these days.

I have been using tape for 20 years and they have given me nothing but
trouble. Travan, DAT, AIT, DLT, AIT-2... all kinds and they all suck.
Ask around and you will find plenty of tape horror stories.

But, if you want to spend $4000+ for a drive and tapes, with a fixed
limit in capacity, and no random access to your data, be my guest. I'd
rather spend that same money on good, inexpensive hard drives. For $4K
you could buy 30-40 of them.

Ed

 

[Rod Speed]

Ah, Folkert.

Your dulcet tones envelop me with a warm sense
of well-being and the anger / angst merely seeps away.

Thats the piss running down your leg when you wet yourself laughing at
****nert.

Perhaps I need some kematherapy!

I still recon that ****nert needs a bullet in the back of the neck.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Folkert, you have some good points - there may be some stresses on the
drives in that they are being powered down, cooling off and warming
back up again.

But I don't see much difference between that and being
used in a workstation that gets turned off nightly.

Point is that it is in an enclosure that is warm and will keep that way for
a reasonable amount of time. Take the drive out and save it in a cold safe
for probably several days will let it cool off to much lower temperatures.

Of course, if you take the drives out of a hot machine and put them in
a refrigerator, that could be a problem.

That's obviously the other end of the extreme.

The enclosure I use has a built in fan, and I find that the drives are
not even warm when removed.

The tray does not even have its own connector - the back end of the
drive is flush, so that the drive's connector mates with a standard
Serial ATA plug in the enclosure.

I suppose this is what you mean by a backplane type tray.

Yes.
Unfortunately they aren't all that way, lots of them are similar to
IDE and SCSI trays with their own proprietary mating connectors.

It als has a key switch that powers down the drive before you remove it -
I always give them a little time to spin down before pulling them out.
I have not seen any problems with hot swapping the drives.

Now, Windows has to be prepared before just pulling out a drive -

Yes, and this isn't different from using IDE.

I do this using a script that tells diskpart.exe to dismount the volume -
this ensures that the cache has been flushed and there are no open handles
on the drive. A similar script re-mounts the volume after inserting it.

And that would probably solve the non-hotswap problem of IDE too.

I just run the scripts from a batch file on the desktop - but if you
knew when you were going to swap the drives, you can schedule the
mounting/dismounting. You could do something similar with other
operating systems if Windows is not your OS.

Also, yes you must treat the drives a little more carefully than tapes.
When taking them off-site, we put them in a padded case - the same
type you might use to store guns, etc.

I have not lost any data, have not seen any errors when chkdsk'ing the
drives, and Windows 2003 has never shown any errors in the system logs.
Furthermore my test restores of data have all gone flawlessly and,
might I add, much swifter than they have with tape.

No system is perfect. There is always the chance of one of your backup
devices failing - that is why you back up to several "media" over time
and do it regularly, just like tape. But, in the case of tape, it
often can be the tape drive itself that fails - leaving you with no way
to restore your data until the drive is replaced.

I have also found in
the past that tape drives will often happily, silently, write bad data
to a tape, leaving you with garbage when it is time to restore.

That of course can still happen with diskdrives.
It just depends on your backup format.

Or, the drive will write (and verify) tapes that only _it_ can read - and
when it fails and you replace it with an identical model, you find none
of your tapes are readable.

When the drive is working, you can only restore using the machine that
has the tape drive installed. Of course you can pull it out & move it
to another machine - but, that assumes you and the tape drive are in
the same location.

Restoring data from a hard drive can be done on any machine that
has a Serial ATA controller, which is most machines built these days.

But you still have to install the tray receiving part.

 

[Ed Cayce]

Also good points Folkert. You are right that my refrigerator comment
is really just a straw man, and I should be called on that.

Hmm I wonder if Toshi is even reading this thread or has this turned
into a rhetorical discussion.

Ed

 

[Rob Nicholson]

Are there any other tape technologies that we don't know about? The

Ultrium2 drives and media seem to offer a very good price.

LTO-1 is a very reliable technology - we're currently using it. Haven't had
personal experience of LTO-2 but that's what we're considering upgrading to.
Ultrium 2 I think is HP's name for their LTO-2 based range. There are
several LTO-2 manufacturers and drives out there.

Cheers, Rob.

 

[Toshi1873]

Also good points Folkert. You are right that my refrigerator comment
is really just a straw man, and I should be called on that.

Hmm I wonder if Toshi is even reading this thread or has this turned
into a rhetorical discussion.

Oh I'm here. We do use removable PATA trays (having given up on our
AIT-2 tape drive). SATA was too new back when we made the switch from
tape to hard drives.

(We estimate that we could put a rotation in with about 20-30 250GB PATA
drives before we'd approach the cost of a tape system. But we're still
evaluating tape every year or two to see if it's a better fit. There
are still some situations where tape is better suited. It's a pity that
tape media is so pricey. If they could've driven the cost down to
$0.05-$0.10/GB it would be more of a sure thing for long-term archival.)

Our backups get staged to a RAID5 server on a nightly basis. We then
mirror those backup files to a workstation with the removable tray every
day. Trays get swapped weekly to an offsite location. We use the
DRW115 series trays with the padded drawerbags.

Biggest issue we have with the DRW115 trays is that not all of them were
manufactured to have a good "fit". Once we winnow the poor fitting
trays out of the pile, they seem to do just fine.

 

[Curious George]

Oh I'm here. We do use removable PATA trays (having given up on our
AIT-2 tape drive). SATA was too new back when we made the switch from
tape to hard drives.

(We estimate that we could put a rotation in with about 20-30 250GB PATA
drives before we'd approach the cost of a tape system.

20-30 backup media in a year? That's pretty on target for your LTO
scenario. There's something to be said for applying at least some if
not all of the principles of tape rotation to HDD rotation.

But we're still
evaluating tape every year or two to see if it's a better fit. There
are still some situations where tape is better suited. It's a pity that
tape media is so pricey. If they could've driven the cost down to
$0.05-$0.10/GB it would be more of a sure thing for long-term archival.)

Where did you pick that price target from? Even HDD's are much more
expensive than that. Usually ppl think of tape as expensive because
of the entry cost involved i.e. the drives & robots, good software.
The tapes themselves are & have been quite reasonable - both per media
& per GB.

Our backups get staged to a RAID5 server on a nightly basis. We then
mirror those backup files to a workstation with the removable tray every
day. Trays get swapped weekly to an offsite location. We use the
DRW115 series trays with the padded drawerbags.

Price of a raid5 server + drives + trays + workstation vs a single
LTO2 drive & tapes = not that huge a difference or even HDDs being
more expensive according to my math.

Biggest issue we have with the DRW115 trays is that not all of them were
manufactured to have a good "fit". Once we winnow the poor fitting
trays out of the pile, they seem to do just fine.

There's more to the costs of a backup/restore solution than the
hardware. What you're describing is very labor intensive. It's also
very fragile and somewhat overly complicated. In a recovery
situation, no one can restore anything useful unless or until the
workstation, raid5 server, & those data paths work perfectly - or you
freak out and start ripping apart equipment. Since basically the
workstation is a glorified tape drive (that uses cheaper more fragile
less reliable media) - it better be reliable and used for little else
- or only carefully approved use. I'd hate to see one of these daisy
chained backup devices propagate an error or some bad update or other
hardware or software problem unnecessarily taking backups or restores
offline.

 

[Curious George]

We have around 135GB of compressed data that needs to be backed up. So
we're looking at the prices of the tape drives that can store 200GB
native per tape. We think that we're narrowed down to the following
solutions.

LTO Ultrium 2 (200GB) - $2000-$2400/drive, $60/tape
AIT-4 (200GB) - $2700/drive, $65/tape
SDLT600 (300GB) - $3200-$3500/drive, $100/tape

Those prices are high.

One such example:
http://froogle.google.com/froogle?s...n&scoring=p&q=LTO2&lmode=online&sa=N&start=10

(Page 2&3)

Are there any other tape technologies that we don't know about? The

That you don't know about? I don't know about that. VXA 320 is
close but you already identified all the heavy hitters around or
slightly above 200GB/tape. You want the heavy hitters anyway - not
some obscure product recommended by some stranger on usenet.

Data growth rate may encourage you to look at >200MB/tape. But you
probably picked 200GB/tape for a solid technical as well as budgetary
reason.

Ultrium2 drives and media seem to offer a very good price.

That's what they're here for.

We've had so-so luck with our AIT-2 drive. So we're leery of AIT-4.

and probably for shelling out for SAIT as well.