Backups [was Re: Is tape dead?]

[Alexander Schreiber]

On Tue, Sep 15, 2015 at 03:32:27PM -0400, ethan at 757.org wrote:
> >Pictures and movies can be original work - perhaps not for you,
> >certainly mostly not for me (I have a few original pictures, but only a
> >few), but I know graphic designers and photographers who have probably
> >produced at least a gigabyte of original pictures each by now.  And
> >people into video production....
> 
> 
> I have a HD video production rig that goes out to some geek events
> and I've used it in the past at stuff. The data generated is around
> 5GB per hour (H264 1080i)
> 
> A few years ago I bought a BD-R drive from Samsung, and recorded 3
> copies each of all the video from a few events that I wanted to put
> on the shelf. I verified the media was the metal stuff not the dye
> stuff (one is HTL, other is LTH, can't remember which is which.) 6
> months later all of the BD-R discs were unreadable. I blamed the
> drive, RMA'ed with Samsung and confirmed with a friend on his
> Pioneer -- nope, the media somehow lost all the data. Memorex
> branded, was what you could find commercially local. The thing is a
> lot of it is rebadged Ritek and other vendors. Data lost. Not
> thrilled, and not sure I can trust that format after that issue. I
> did buy some Verbatim BD-R media but haven't used it yet. Pretty
> much keep everything on power consuming heat producing spinning
> disk.

Well, I have been mulling buying a BD-writer for a while (much less
now since my backups go to LTO3), thanks for the warning - looks like
BD-R is another waste of time & money.
 
> I've heard some horror stories with tape as well.
> 
> When I worked at NASA the powderhorns we had originally had some
> tape drive that was like $100,000 each but really I guess was made
> from SVHS VCRs. STK literally had two drives on site all the time as
> the ones that were swapped in that week when two would fail. I think
> they converted it over to an IBM tape, can't remember what the SVHS
> based thing was but it was single reel spooled out into the deck,
> probably 9840 or something.
> 
> I would cut multiple tapes of anything you care about!

Depends very much on the tape technology. Anything based on VHS tape was
a complete waste of time and money. Anything based on helical scan cannot
be trusted (at a previous job, we would boot/install machines from DDS3
tapes and I kept 3-4 copies of each install tape. After two years I had
a nice big stack of failed tapes). Linear scan (e.g. DLT, LTO) with
read-after-write is the only tape technology worth trusting. Even so,
for data you care about, keep multiple copies and multiple generations
around.

Kind regards,
           Alex.
-- 
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
 looks like work."                                      -- Thomas A. Edison