Best software for LTO 4 on Windows ?

[benoit delval]

Hi,

Any feedback/recommendation for a simple archive/backup software to drive a HP LTO4 tape-drive from SCRATCH station? (Windows server 2003)

main usage: archive dpx files in TAR format


Thank you ;)


Ben

[John Tissavary]

IMHO, the best way to do this would be to set up a separate PC running Linux, and network that to your Scratch workstation. This way you can use actual TAR to archive & write to tape, ensuring maximum compatibility,

You can easily set this up for less than the cost of most Windows or Mac based software.


regards,

John T.

[benoit delval]

Thank you for the feedback John.

Will we get fast enough speed trough Gibabit ethernet than with a local SAS connection to Scracth station ?
HP 1840 LTO4 tape drive data transfer rates is announced up to 240MB/sec. vs 125MB/sec for Gigabit ethernet.
Ben

[John Tissavary]

No, I don't believe it'd be full speed on gig-e. Our LTO-3 drives do get full speed service from gig-e, but LTO-4 is faster. Maybe with superbits / jumbo-packets gig-e could get pretty close to full LTO-4 speed.



cheers,

John T

[kevinzanit]

Why not use the software that came with the LTO4 drive? The HP software is pretty good and about as easy as it gets.

I am assuming you are backing up off of a RAID array. If so, you would take a serious performance hit over GigE, even with jumbo frames. Even over 2gig fibre it is hard to sustain the maximum throughput that LTO4 is capable of.