practical tapeless workflow

[Mark L. Pederson]

I'm wondering if they need USB to do the dynamic resizing of a volume thing.

That's what I am thinking. This thing has some NICE features - really nice to scale up - and you can use different size drives, etc. - and price point and flexibility on this make the USB 2 not so bad - I am getting one - I'll ping you after I beat the sh#* out of it - but it is getting stellar reviews -

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I'm getting one to play with I think. Haven't ordered yet though. I'd really like to see one that holds 8 drives and connects via eSATA.

I'm also thinking they need the USB interface for the dynamic resizing and communication between the unit and the system. Although, dynamic volume sizing should be available through SATA as well. Maybe it's just a limitation because this is an initial product.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I'm also thinking that drobo could be a great solution for those looking to use hard drives as backup. Bare drives are easily added and removed from the system. You could put 4x500GB drives in there and fill up the RAID. Then shelve the RAID set and start with clean ones. It would be highly reliable HDD backup with a lot of fail-safe properties. Obviously lower capacity than just using individual or even duplicate raw data to drives, but very secure.

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Going back to the earlier bit of the thread. I've heard that Enterprise HDDs are marketing junk and the failure rates are pretty much indistiguishable from 'consumer' HDDs.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Going back to the earlier bit of the thread. I've heard that Enterprise HDDs are marketing junk and the failure rates are pretty much indistiguishable from 'consumer' HDDs.

That comment is right on... Because if you look at the OEM components market, there really is no such thing as "enterprise" HDDs. These manufacturers only have a certain number of models and most, if not all, are available in consumer channels. About the closest you can get to anything "enterprise level" is the 15Krpm units, but they're no more reliable, just very fast at a premium price and a bit lower capacity. And they're very popular with a lot of the performance computing PC crowd that likes to have them for bragging rights and/or to stripe 2 or 3 together in a RAID-0 for near instant load times on their favorite games.

Some manufacturers do offer occasional ruggedized models that are intended to be more robust. Usually at the expense of performance and/or capacity. But these are intended for use in industrial applications or military, aerospace, etc.. We see that with the SSD market too. Look at the first crops of SSDs -- 16GB for $12000. Seriously, other than the military or highly-specialized niche markets, who is going to buy that? :matrix:

[HARMLESSPictures]

Ahhhh, a tapeless world. I think that there will be some time until a complete tapeless workflow becomes a regular part of the production platform. At least down here in Melbourne.

[Cail Young]

Ahhhh, a tapeless world. I think that there will be some time until a complete tapeless workflow becomes a regular part of the production platform. At least down here in Melbourne.

Prey Alice, a feature, is shooting right now on P2 exclusively. The tipping point is here, I think, given that we're currently data-managing on several student tapeless projects! Once these guys move into the industry, the cycle will be complete. Party time!

[Gavin Greenwalt]

I'm also thinking that drobo could be a great solution for those looking to use hard drives as backup. Bare drives are easily added and removed from the system. You could put 4x500GB drives in there and fill up the RAID. Then shelve the RAID set and start with clean ones. It would be highly reliable HDD backup with a lot of fail-safe properties. Obviously lower capacity than just using individual or even duplicate raw data to drives, but very secure.

I thought about that but then a terrible thought crossed my mind: What if the Drobo is using some crazy proprietary device mounting system.

Can you pull a drive out of drobo and mount it like any other drive?

If the answer is "no" then you've just signed a 10 year+ contract with DRobo for their hardware. At least with RAID 1 I can take that drive and rebuild it in any Raid 1 enclosure anywhere in the world for the forseeable future.

Drobo just wreaks of the DAT nightmare that once was. Perfect for the home PC. Terrible for long term storage (assuming it works the way I think it does). If I'm wrong and the drives are mountable using generic hardware then it does look like a great archive solution.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I thought about that but then a terrible thought crossed my mind: What if the Drobo is using some crazy proprietary device mounting system.

Can you pull a drive out of drobo and mount it like any other drive?

Unfortunately, it appears to be a proprietary RAID style system. So yeah, you would be limited to using or re-mounting those drives in a drobo system to regain access to the data. But for this reason, I was looking at drobo to be an interim solution. It's also unclear if drobo allows for various configurations that may be more manageable for the future. At this point, I think it's all proprietary.

At least with RAID 1 I can take that drive and rebuild it in any Raid 1 enclosure anywhere in the world for the forseeable future.

In theory, yes... But not all RAID controllers mount drives just the same. RAID 1 should be just fine as it's just two mirrored drives. Porting over a RAID 3 or 5 set would be problematic though. I've tried to move a RAID 5 drive set from one server to another after system failures and unless the systems are using the same hardware, it can be problematic.

Drobo just wreaks of the DAT nightmare that once was. Perfect for the home PC. Terrible for long term storage (assuming it works the way I think it does). If I'm wrong and the drives are mountable using generic hardware then it does look like a great archive solution.

I'll see what drobo looks like here in a few days. I've got one being delivered either tomorrow or thursday. But I'm fully expecting it to fill the need of fault-tolerant desktop storage that isn't performance critical. It should serve itself well for that and should also provide a fairly secure means for short-term backups. For long-term though, I think the best is still RAID-1 HDDs and/or duplicate copies made to LTO or DLT. But I'm playing with some other options in the meantime.... Until I decide just which way I'm going... The Exabyte Magnum 224 with LTO-4 drive is sooo tempting, but I'd have to backup 20TB to duplicate tapes over the next year to justify its cost over using 500GB HDDs.

[Christoffer Glans]

Define "tape".
If P2 or CF cards gets cheaper and larger, would they not take over as "tapes"? The future is not a tapeless workflow, I believe it to be a evolution of "tape". The future is a card workflow.
Picture a CF card able to record 30 minutes of 4K raw. That will happen some day, or at least, some kind of storage in that size will be able to.
I love flash storage...