This IS the Avid L2: RE: [Avid-L2] Re: what are yall using to archive

Saturday, January 19, 2013

RE: [Avid-L2] Re: what are yall using to archive

Pat

My observation about LTFS is that it does need special software. The
whole open source mantra doesn't really hold water. It is in fact an
open specification which is not quite the same thing. It may not be
proprietary (i.e. it is free to download) and allegedly open source but
it is in effect from IBM and other members of the Ultrium consortium.
One might be able to console oneself with the assertion that the lack of
reliance on one company for the software is a good thing but in my
experience not all LTFS implementations have been equal thus far; the
LTFS software from different vendors - HP, Quantum etc is not always
compatible with that from the others.

Have you performed a test on a Windows computer to see how many
flavours of LTFS you can reliably read back without any special software
(other than the special software you actually do need)? How did you get
on? Did you make sure there were few empty folders on there? Nice long
file names with illegal characters in them. Plenty of interleaved files
created when copying multiple directories to the LTFS "disk" at once ;-)

Thus far my experience has been that the X1500 (and the SX10 if you need
a library) has behaved like I hoped LTFS would and if a customer insists
on having an LTFS tape sent to them one can be made natively on the
X1500 or exported. Better yet, they can get the Xendata software and we
can be certain that the tapes I wrote will read back in their facility
with 100% predictability.

Rupert Watson

+44 7787 554 801

www.root6.com

From: Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com [mailto:Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf
Of Pat Horridge
Sent: 19 January 2013 13:03
To: Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Avid-L2] Re: what are yall using to archive

We span tapes on our StorageDNA system. I presume the data isn't spanned
just the process of distributing it across the tapes.

The LTFS gives us and the client the ability to restore data from the
tape
without requiring any special software. This is a consideration for
tapes
that may need to be restored 20 or more years down the line.

I've made a point of avoiding spinning disc solutions for the last 6
months
where I can. SSD technology is on the up, Capacity is on the up, cost is
on
the down and it's not long before spinning discs are a thing of the
past.

Also even with a RAID setup you can suffer file system corruption,
accidental user deletion and a whole range of other problems that leave
your
data at risk.

Tape isn't full proof but I'm much happy with content on tapes in
multiple
locations than a massive spinning drive array.

Pat Horridge
Technical Director, Trainer, Avid Certified Instructor
VET
Production Editing Digital Media Design DVD
T +44 (0)20 7505 4701 | F +44 (0)20 7505 4800 | E pat@vet.co.uk
>
pat@vet.co.uk |
http://www.vet.co.uk> www.vet.co.uk | Lux Building 2-4 Hoxton Square
London N1 6US

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