LTO-Drive, retrospect, files.

[larswik]

Hi, I use Retrospect with my VXA-320 firewire and love it. I am starting to need more storage space and was looking in to an LTO-4 drive.

 

I was told by someone that I would not be able to retrieve files and folder like I do now with Retrospect. This allows me to pull a project off the VXA tape with out having to restore the whole tape. Can someone confirm or deny that rumor? I am hoping I can catalog the tape and get files from it when I need and not restore the whole tape to get a file.

 

Thanks!

 

-Lars

[rhwalker]

Lars,

 

I believe that you were misinformed. Can you explain with a bit more specificity why you were told that you couldn't do what you want with an LTO-4 drive? (also helpful would be the version x.x.x of Retrospect that you are using).

 

If you use a supported LTO-4 drive and autoloader, and if you use a supported SCSI card (unclear whether you are talking about using a SCSI LTO-4 or a Firewire LTO-4), you should see similar results (but faster) with the LTO-4.

 

We have an Exabyte VXA-2 1x10 PacketLoader (SCSI) attached to an ATTO UL4D SCSI HBA in our Xserve, and it works fine. Before that, we had DAT (DDS and DDS-2, both SCSI), and that worked fine, too.

 

Tape is tape. Tape backup sets are tape backup sets.

 

Perhaps I don't quite understand what "someone" told you. Could you explain a bit more?

 

If you look in the list of supported devices, you will see quite a few supported LTO-4 drives. There are many people using LTO-4 on Retrospect 6.x and Retrospect 8.x. See:

Retrospect Supported Devices - LTO-4

 

Russ

[larswik]

Thanks for the fast reply. Let me be a little more specific with software. When I bought the Exabyte VXA-320 Firewire tape back up system I got Retrospect version 6.1.126. I use it with OS X 10.4.11. I have not had a problem with this set up in the 18 months of using it. I was explaining in this post http://dvcreators.net/discuss/showthread.php?t=25267 that I love my VXA-320 and the poster Strype's in the #6 post mentioned that you need to restore the full catalog.

 

I was hoping that I would be able to use an LTO-4 drive in the same manor that I use my VXA-320. Do they have a firewire version of an LTO-4 Tape drive? That would be nice. I don't know what an auto loader is? I just want an external tape drive like the VXA-320 that I can put tapes into by hand write 800 gigs and then as I need to re visit projects in the future be able to just recover that project and it's files and not restore the whole 800 gigs or the whole tape.

 

I have been doing a lot of HD video production which takes up 1 gig per minute. I need to save all the data. When I bought the VXA-320 I was under the impression that I could save 320 gigs on a tape with compression. After having problems I called Tech support and they said that video was already compressed so I could only get 160 gigs per tape.

 

Long story short, I would like to bump up to 800 gigs uncompressed so I burn less tape and less money.

[rhwalker]

Thanks for the fast reply. Let me be a little more specific with software. When I bought the Exabyte VXA-320 Firewire tape back up system I got Retrospect version 6.1.126. I use it with OS X 10.4.11. I have not had a problem with this set up in the 18 months of using it.

Fine, got that. The current version of Retrospect 6.x is 6.1.230, and the update is available for free from:

Retrospect 6.1 updates

 

You might also want to update your Retrospect Driver Update ("RDU") at the same time.

 

I was explaining in this post http://dvcreators.net/discuss/showthread.php?t=25267 that I love my VXA-320 and the poster Strype's in the #6 post mentioned that you need to restore the full catalog.

Respectfully, Strype is misinformed. I read his post and there is no mention of Retrospect in his or your post. Perhaps what he says is true with some other software, but not with Retrospect. If you use a supported drive and a supported SCSI HBA card, you will see the same behavior with the LTO-4 as you see with your VXA-320, except faster and higher capacity. As I said before, tape is tape to Retrospect. There is nothing special about LTO-4.

 

You might want to search these Retrospect forums for examples of the use by many of LTO-4.

 

I was hoping that I would be able to use an LTO-4 drive in the same manor that I use my VXA-320.

And you can, provided that it is a supported drive with a supported SCSI HBA. Hint: Get an ATTO SCSI card. If you have PCI-e, get an ATTO UL5D. If you have PCI-X, get an ATTO UL4D.

 

Do they have a firewire version of an LTO-4 Tape drive? That would be nice.

Don't know, check the supported devices database, and check the Exabyte (Tandberg) web site:

Exabyte (Tandberg) tape drives

 

I don't know what an auto loader is? I just want an external tape drive like the VXA-320 that I can put tapes into by hand write 800 gigs and then as I need to re visit projects in the future be able to just recover that project and it's files and not restore the whole 800 gigs or the whole tape.

Again, check the Exabyte (Tandberg) web site. Trust me, you need an autoloader (into which you put a bunch of tapes and have them move, as needed, into the drive under program control). An autoloader is the only way to do tape. It will change your life.

 

I have been doing a lot of HD video production which takes up 1 gig per minute. I need to save all the data. When I bought the VXA-320 I was under the impression that I could save 320 gigs on a tape with compression. After having problems I called Tech support and they said that video was already compressed so I could only get 160 gigs per tape.

Ok. Again, you need an autoloader.

 

Even if you are able to do compression, real-world numbers with VXA-320 and Retrospect are about 220 GB compressed per tape. The tape drive will lengthen the inter-block spacing so that the data can keep up with the drive.

 

Long story short, I would like to bump up to 800 gigs uncompressed so I burn less tape and less money.

You haven't provided any information about your hardware. If you are doing a lot of HD video production, I would suspect that you have a fast computer. You will need a bunch of RAM and a fast computer to keep the data pipe filled for an LTO-4. Oh, did I mention that you need to get an autoloader?

 

Russ

[larswik]

Russ, Thanks again for the time you took to detail your response. When I upgrade to the LTO-4 I will do my research on SCSI cards and bump up my ram. I think I am running 3 gigs. I have a G5 2.5ghz quad core.

 

When I finish projects right now I put the project and media linked to the project on a 160 gig partition. When that partition fills up I I write a tape with the VXA-320 and put the tape in my fire proof safe.

 

I don't know that I need an auto loader since I only acess the tapes maybe 2 or 3 times a month. Before I trash the partition I make a copy of it with Haxil's Diskcatalog. They no longer sell that program but it acts like a master catalog for all my archives going back 15 years from CD, DVD and now tape. Once I find what I am looking for with Diskcatalog I grab the tape I need and restore the footage.

 

I am interested in what you talked about "220 Gigs" using the Compressed setting. Next time I write a tape I will try to do 220 gigs and turn on the compression inside of Retrospect.

 

Thanks again!

 

-Lars

[rhwalker]

I am interested in what you talked about "220 Gigs" using the Compressed setting. Next time I write a tape I will try to do 220 gigs and turn on the compression inside of Retrospect.

Unless you have changed some settings, your VXA-320 should be doing hardware compression by default.

 

Go to:

Configure > Backup Sets

Select one of your backup sets, click Configure,

See what is shown for "Options:".

 

By default, I believe, you are set for hardware compression by the drive.

 

Regarding the data capacity, note that I said "real-world numbers with VXA-320 and Retrospect are about 220 GB compressed per tape." That is with typical files usually seen on a server. I don't know the mix of your data.

 

I wouldn't suggest doing software compression with Retrospect if your drive supports compression. You will probably get less capacity, not more, because Retrospect will be spending much time doing the compression, causing the data pipe to become starved to the tape drive, causing the interblock spacing to increase, causing the capacity to decrease (because of the increased spacing between blocks).

 

Retrospect 6 is single-threaded, and cannot use your multiple cores. Retrospect 8 is multi-threaded.

 

Your 3 GB RAM seems adequate for what you are doing, even with LTO-4.

 

Russ

 

[larswik]

I see what you are saying Russ. I think an upgrade to 8 will be good when I upgrade to an Intel machine.

 

I also use Retrospect to back up a 500 gig raid 0 drive to another 1 TB hard drive. Every night it launches at 4am and looks for the new stuff on my raid and backs it up to a file on the 1TB drive. I'm hoping 8 will solve a problem with the nightly back up. The back up file gets larger and larger when new data is added to it. But if I trash files from my raid, those files are not trashed on the back up drive. Once the back up drive is full I trash the back up file and start a new back up file. So far I have to go through this process 3 or 4 times per year that takes about 12 hours.

 

It would be nice if 8 can see the files I delete from my raid and remove them from the back up file. This way the raid and the back up are the same size.

 

Thanks again Russ. You sold me on getting an LTO-4 HH drive set up!

 

-Lars