Backing up TB's worth of data

[Phil2008]

My slow comment was more how it was used in a business environment, disk based solutions will have many disks to land data on. Our new data protection appliance is capable of speeds upto 288TB/hr, from what i can see with LTO7, it'll struggle to peak over 1TB/hr. Hence more moving away from tape based solutions.

Didnt know there were systems capable of transferring data at those speeds, pretty impressive that.
My LTO4 will backup 400gb in just over 2hrs, so yeah quite slow in compresent, but the hard drive could be holding it back a bit as its a WD Green and its encrypted.

I'm bidding on some LT04 gear as a tester. I've got 60TB and just looking fora DR option if the house is looted, or burns down.

Wow 60TB impressive, thats going to take a few days to backup and a good few tapes with LTO4. You might be able to get a good deal on the tapes though from ebay, if you buy them in bulk.. The going rate is about £40-50 for a 5pack of RW 400GB tapes, (you can fit 377gb on 1 tape if the data is cant be compressed) cheaper if they are used though.

 

[Phil2008]

Just a quick update guys.. So yeah the buying of the hardware and getting enough tapes to backup my media drive at the beginning has costed me about £150.... But now I am running a backup every few months just adding the new vids onto the last tape. Then when that is full, I'll buy another tape for £10-15 and carry on.. Im guessing a tape will take me about 8-12 months to fill up, so I dont think thats too bad spending £10-15 every 8-12 months to keep my media drive backed up, do you?

 

[Phil2008]

Hey guys, just a heads up,, there are 2 LTO3 drives selling for £50 on the bay

 

[Phil2008]

well I am on my 9th 400gb tape and thats just under 4tb of backing up... But its not too bad as 1 400gb tape lasts me 1-2yrs before I fill it up and a tape is about £10-15, cheaper if you get them in bulk tho

I wouldnt like to restore them all if my drive failed, as it would take me a whole day or longer to restore the 9tapes. But at least I wont be crying if the drive did fail on me.

 

[Phil2008]

Backing stuff to tape is good, saves money in the long run and safer then backing up onto hard drives, but backing to tape is a bit of a faff if you want files updating... For me its ideal as I am only backing up video files and not updating any previous files... I update my vid library on to tape every month or so.

 

[Phil2008]

hi guys, just a update.... Yesterday in the process of doing a fresh reinstall of windows I had a virus and it killed windows, luckily I backed windows up a few hrs before, during the reinstalling of windows so that was ok. The virus had taken out quite a few files on my storage drive, but none that was important and about a quarter to half of files on my media drive.

Im just in the process of restoring the media files from the LTO tapes and so far ok... I would have been crying now if it had happened this time last year as my media drive wasn't backed up at all. So thank god that I bought the tape drive and bought it at a steal price, or I really wouldn't have known what todo, I think I would have gone to bed and wouldn't of wanted to wake up again. But as it goes Im not all that bothered....... So guys backup,Backup, BACKUP, it will save you a lot of heartache, as its not only drive failures you have to wrorry about..

 

[Phil2008]

Just finished restoring my media videos, and with this being the first time I have used the tape drive for restoring my data, I was a bit unsure that it was going todo it properly. But no errors or anything at all, its done it perfectly. Plus it had to search for files on the tapes aswel, so not a straight forward task.

So yes Im really pleased with the tape drive, its all worked as it should and its been a life saver..... A hard drive as a backup for my media would have been a bit quicker at restoring the data(less time searching for files and the inserting of the tapes) but more expensive,, as the tape drive only costed me £25 and about £60 for the 9tapes I have used so far to backup 3.5tb of data on. Plus tapes for storing data on are much safer then hard drives, if you intend of having 1 copy of your data backed up.

 

[Phil2008]

How are tapes safer than hard drives? (especially offline hard drives)

Tape is the most reliable easily-removable backup medium out there - Tape storage is more energy efficient: Once all the data has been recorded, a tape cartridge simply sits quietly in a draw or cupboard and doesn’t consume any power at all. Tape is also exceedingly reliable, with error rates that are four to five orders of magnitude lower than those of hard drives. And tape is very secure, with built-in, on-the-fly encryption and additional security provided by the nature of the medium itself. After all, if a cartridge isn’t mounted in a drive, the data cannot be accessed or modified. Tapes also can be passed over the heads the drive more then 200+ times and last 15-30years in storage.

 

[Phil2008]

Yeah thats sure is a bit of copying and pasting..A hard drive can still fail even with it powered off between backing up. Also I dont know if this is true, but apparently the tape heads of the drive doesn't actually touch the tape when reading or writing?

But yeah people think of tape being totally rubbish, I guess because of the cassette and vhs/betamax tapes.

 

[Phil2008]

I couldn't bring myself to spend £100+ on a decent hard drive for backing up my media drive. It just such a waste, thats why I have only just backed it up recently, because I found a better solution then using hard drives.

Any medium can fail at any time, though a hermetically sealed HD sitting on a shelf, it less likely to fail than a tape sitting on the same shelf.

If you're backing 10's of TB's then maybe tape is useful, below that, I don't see the advantage.

Well apparently tape is the safest way to back up on, because unless you throw the tape across the room or the tape breaks inside, not much else can go wrong with a tape. Also the lto tape and drive improves yearly getting faster and larger in capacity, (think you can get 12tb tapes now, but the drives costs like a grand to buy), even though its fading out.

 

[Phil2008]

I just use spare drives that I have knocking around that I dont use anymore to backup my windows boot drive and games/storage drive. But to buy a expensive hard drive just to backup on,, I just cant do it

I can see that tape would just annoy some people, if you need to access the data frequently as its a slower process then the hard drive. But they are ideal for backing up media server's and stuff like that, that contains a large amount of data and is infrequently accessed. But if you have to spend loads on a tape drive, then it's probably not worth it....Plus you never know if the tape drive will support the next OS you upgrade to... I thought I would have to use winxp/win7 for the SCSI card and tape drive, as I never thought windows 10 would support them for 1 second, but it did

 

[Phil2008]

I just borrow the LTO 6 drive in work for a few hours. 2.5TB raw storage ~4TB realistically with some compressible data. Still £20 a cartridge so a lot more economic on the media front. Hardware cost is the biggy though as the drives are around £5k. Every tape we make in work is done twice and the second copy is stored offsite.

Id love a LTO6 drive but like you say, they are mega money, wonder why they are so expensive? What speed were you getting from the drive, I get about 60-80mb/s from my LTO3? I only go by the uncompressed storage of the tapes because you dont see any compression backing up videos.

I guess when 1 tape holds 2.5tb and only cost £20 per tape, making 2 copies of your data is not a problem My LTO3tapes holds a pathetic 400gb(800gb compressed) and costs roughly £5-£10 per tape.

 

[Phil2008]

Interesting guys,, apparently tape drives are no good for doing incremental backups....... For example,

The slowest an LTO-7 drive can go using LTO-7 media is 79.99MB/s native. Add compression, and you’re at 100-200 MB/s minimum speed and incremental backups are way too slow. Tape drives want to go very fast, the drive has no choice but to stop, rewind, and start up again. It does this over and over, dragging the tape head back and forth across the read write head in multiple passes. This wears out the tape and the drive, and is the number one reason behind tape drive failures in most companies. Tape drives are simply not the right tool for incremental backups. Disk drives are much better suited to the task.

I only run full backups of my data, But I have thought about trying incremental backups as that would speed up my backup time, as It wouldnt need to keep going over whats already been backed up.

But I doubt that applies to me though as I can only get speeds of 60-80mb/s. But saying that my drive does stop every 30secs or so and has to spin up again, so I might have a bottleneck with the SCSI card and/or hard drive not sending the data fast enough to the drive.

Also if incremental are bad for tape drives, you dont want tapes that hold a huge amount of data, not if your having to start the backup from the start of the tape all the time, you want nice small tapes... So I might be blessed with only having a LTO3 drive and I can even use LTO2 tapes and they only hold 200mb of data..

Ummmm interesting, if this is true.


Edit : I have just checked online and the backup speed for my drive is 68mb/s, so thats good, no bottlenecking going on.

 

[Phil2008]

Just bought an LTO6 drive to backup up my NAS offsite. Should be an interesting journey. Should arrive in a week or so. Decided LT04 would be too much hassle with the data quantity I have, and the tapes are less economic than the higher capacity ones.

Thats the problem if you have a lot of data to back up and your using a low spec tape drive.. I have roughly 3.5tb of data backed up, and Im on my 9th LTO3 tape. But it does the job and buying a 400gb tape every few months at about £8 at a time is cheaper then buying hard drives when they get full. I normally buy my tapes in boxes of 5 for about £30-£40 though.

 

[Phil2008]

£800. HP 6250, refurbished with a 6 mo warranty. HBA\cables seperate obvs.

Wowsers and Im guessing for brand new your looking at over a grand... These drives must contain high quality components in them, thats all I can say.

I think the latest lto7-lto8 drives cost something like 3grand for new.

 

[Phil2008]

Thats just stupid daft money to spend on something just for backing up your data, If my drive costed anywhere near that, I would make do with hard drives or nothing at all just keep my fingers and toes crossed. £6000 (mega wowsers). I think I'll stick with my £25 LTO3 drive, unless I win the lottery

I think I did well getting a LTO3 drive for £25 and its in very good condition too, I have seen meny drives on ebay in very poor condition and people are asking £25-£40 for them.

Here's a pic of my drive, and Im backing up as we speak. With my Powerwalker UPS underneath, so if the power fails when Im backing up, the UPS will keep everything going for at least 1-2hrs.

 

[Phil2008]

Its all depends what your backing up... For bits n bobs ie bootdrive and odd files, use a hdd or the cloud for easy access to the data. For large stuff that wont likely get accessed much, use tape.

Im using LTO2 200GB tapes now that I have the balk of my media backed up on the LTO3 tapes, as I only backup a few GB's each month. So 1 200gb tape lasts me ages before its full and the tapes are cheaper to buy.

Dont know if this is true but I read that google uses tape to backup?

 

[Phil2008]

This is the report of my LTO3 Drive

 

[Phil2008]

yes thanks pop the update on dropbox, thanks.. When I first run the HPS tools, it says theirs a firmware but when I click download and install, nothing happens.. I bet a internal drive is very nice, I would have got a internal if my case had any bays. I bought a nice long 5meter SCSI cable, so the drive can be sat anywhere, so its not really in the way.

 

[Phil2008]

Got my new 10tb WD Red today and just starting to copy all the media from the old 4tb hdd to the new 1.. From sata to USB3