Quantum 600a desktop or rackmount...who has the best price?

[C.H.Haskell]

R3d Overload here.

I have no other choice then to invest in a system that can safley back up my R3d data. Through plenty research and talking with many of you it seams that the quantum 600a SDLT tape system is the one for me at this time so now I just need to figure out where to pick one up. I am leaning towards the rack mount set up cause that is how my studio is configured although the desktop version maybe better choice for backing up in the field?

Any suggestions are much appreciated.

[Kevin Wild]

Not sure about that model, but I just purchased and set up a Quantum LTO-4 and am VERY happy with it. I thought I would be a little over my head in IT land, but it has worked pretty easily using Retrospect as my backup software.

It holds 800 Gigs per $86/tape. The write to tape is definitely slow compared to a harddrive, but bringing files back was pretty quick. I think I brought back a 100Gig file in less than 30 minutes.

At first I liked the allure of a "drag and drop" setup like LTO-3A, but the more I've used this, the more it's no big deal. The software catalogs your backup, so any time, you can see exactly what is on a given tape and bring back only 1 file if you want. This was different than I thought it would work...and I'm very happy about that.

Let me know if you have any questions on LTO-4. I have it hooked up via a SCSI SAS card to an XServe that then shares an XRaid.

Kevin

[Darren Orange]

I would contact Silverado!

www.silverado.cc

They should be able to get you setup and take care of for all your needs.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Kevin, which LTO-4 drive and controller card did you go with?

[Kevin Wild]

I got a Quantum LTO-4HH desktop casing tape drive. It was less than $2,800 and included (though my rep didn't know it) the LSI SCSI SAS card for the PCIe slot of our XServe. I did need to buy a cable...

Working pretty great.

Kevin

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Thanks, Kevin.

Yeah, it seems that's really the only LTO-4 SAS combination that's working on OSX right now (Quantum HH + LSI card + Retrospect).

[Harva Raj]

how long does it take to backup 320GB of data on LTO-4HH? (and full 800GB?)
is it possible to preview the files in retrospect before you decide to backup the file?

[Simon Blackledge]

Same LTO4 setup here.

Full 800Gig with a verify pass takes just under 6 hours. But this is a full vfx project.. some large files.. lots of small files etc.. Suspect would be quicker with just large files.

This was coming off a Raid though on a server capable of about 200MBs.

Streaming to SAS just off a single internal may be a bottleneck. You need to feed the LTO4 drive as quick as it can write to tape or it gets a bit unhappy.

Works well..

RE: Preview.. do you mean as in view video files? or view a list of files to be backed up ?

You create a dataset to backup. This consists of folders that you have made available to Retrospect to see.

It's pretty simple really.

s

[zak forrest]

TEKSERVE in NYC

[C.H.Haskell]

Thanks folks...I was not aware Tekserve had these systems, I will head over there report my findings.