Dats or DVD?

[mpro]

I need help. I want to get a backup for my PT 24 system. Do I use DAT, DDS3 or AIT? OR DVD?
I have heard that there is some concern with DVD and reliablity. What does everyone else use?

Currently I am backing up to Cd-R's. Which as you know takes forever.

Please advise!

[Techsupt2]

I don't have any DVD experience yet... anybody else?

-bryan

[Steve Rosenthal]

I assume by DVD we're actually talking about DVD-RAM? As far as I know, actual DVD writers are still in the 10 to 15k dollar range (ouch!).

I don't know much about DVD-RAM except that it looks like it's got higher capacities per disk than CDR, but I hear it's pretty slow. Though I can't imagine it being much slower than CDR.

For sheer speed and capacity, AIT and DLT are two of the most popular tape choices where huge amounts of data storage are required. I'm not sure about AIT, but DLT can handle 20 or 30GB of uncompressed data on a single tape. Both DLT and AIT units are expensive compared to 8 and 4mm DAT drives, but they are pretty reliable. Also, their transfer rates are somewhere around 30 to 40MB/min, which is awfully fast as backups go.

For longevity, things like CDR and MO are very reliable. I've heard that MO has a 60 year shelf life. The only catch is, they are both slow and the storage capacity of the media is small compared to tape.

--Steve Rosenthal, Digidesign ETS

[Disco_Doctor]

DVD-RAM is really really slow. Way slower than current 4x CDRs during writes. I considered it unusably slow and sent it back. Not ready for prime time.

DDS3 is what I'm currently using. So far, it seems like a very nice compromise between speed and cost. Relatively quick, and very convenient for daily backups. DDS4 is out now - and it is (from what I hear) equivalent to AIT in capacity and speed, and also pretty inexpensive.

For long term archiving, when a session is all done and ready to be put away, I do a "save a copy as..." in Pro Tools to consolidate the session and then burn that consolidated session to CDR's. In an ideal world, I'd do my long term archiving to MO, but large capacity MO is still pretty expensive, so I'm sticking with the CDR archiving for now.

http://www.digidesign.com/ubb/images/icons/smile.gif

[Soundog]

I need your thoughts on backup systems for my needs. I need to backup long format ProTools files. the shows I do are one hour and two hour shows so at most a one hour show. The OMF Files alone are over a gig when I get them. CD's wont hold a complete show and DLT is pretty damn expensive. Any ideas??

Soundog

[Steve Rosenthal]

I've been recording all week in a studio (using Pro Tools, of course http://www.digidesign.com/ubb/images/icons/smile.gif ), and they back up to AIT. I asked them how they like it, and they love it. They say it's fast, reliable, and it holds up to 30 gigs, I believe they said. The cost for the unit is around $3000, and the carts are $99. This is on a par with DLT.

If you are doing large capacity backups that need to be done quickly, AIT sounds like a good way to go.

I know cost is always a concern, but I'll wax philosophical: How much is your session worth? Compare the one-time amount of $3000 against the price of data recovery -- at least $1000 -- or the price of your time to redo work you'd already done. Or the cost of losing a client.

You're buying an insurance policy -- only this one you'll definitely end up using at some point.

--Steve Rosenthal, Digidesign ETS

[raa]

actual DVD writers are still in the 10 to 15k dollar range (ouch!).
I don't know much
...I've heard that MO
...The only catch is, they are both slow and the
storage capacity of the media is small compared to tape.

THIS IS THE KIND OF RUNAROUND DIGIDESIGN
has been giving the end user for years...
or at least since i paid 4000 dollars for a mezzo system four years ago...which was digi's current partyline answer back then...
but even then no one told me if I had a session in every day I would be doomed to stay at the studio and sleep on the floor every night ( when I got done a session at two in the morning it would take 5 hours to back up the nights recording, erase it at 7am,and then 5 hours start loading in a session coming in at noon)(nor was I informed that to use the system as i wished, with sanity included, one or two more 4 gig drives at quite a high cost, were necessary)

I find it very disheartening to see Digidesign employees themselves still giving such ambigous answers and even not know that :

1) dvdram writers are now available for $699. digi should be hot on testing these but I'm sure they won't give any solid answer for some time.
2) from the response above(new pt24 owner unsure about best backup) even digi itself still has no good concrete response on which is the most reliable, most effecient way to backup.
a. cdrom -doesn't fit much on it and is slow
b. any session worth backing up needs to be double backed up(or tripled) to guard against drive or media failure, so 8,10,20,30
gig media times 2 or 3 becomes very costly very quickly.
c.any media capable of holding large amounts of different clients session, if it were to go bad, could potentially wipe out vast amounts of work, as opposed to losing one session or client when experiencing catastrophic loss.

Digi needs to develop a High! Speed device with a 2 to 3 gig capacity with extremely cheap media as a backup solution for most users. Until then any of the current alternatives have one or more drawbacks in cost of device, cost of media, slow speed, or too many projects on one tape.
This could be achieved thru a partnership with a designer of backup systems by promising sales of devices and media in high volume. I don't think any digi owner would have any problem giving up freedom of choice if a REAL backup solution were offered.


I have just finished recording a major release record which took 197 cd's to back up
16 songs at various stages thru the project. Now that we have completed final mixing , I have two nine gig drives and two four gig drives of which to do a double back up of.
A Nightmare.
The songs have all grown well past one cd size. There is no digi, or any other utility, with which I can catalog the 197 cd's I have already made, to determine which songs have new Pish files(pitch corrected vocals), newly bounced tracks, new session files, etc. I must start from scratch and double back up 26 gigs of material to be safe, which will take 60 or 70 cd's and a lot of days burning cd's.


As the opening message of this thread the person says he has a pt24 system and is unsure of what backup format to use!!! It is outrageous that digi can continue to sell systems without ensuring the buyer also gets an appropriate backup system. The only truely solid backup solutions exist for only the independently wealthy. A fast dlt drive cost nearly as much as the protools system.(I've never heard of a person selling digi equipment who mentioned the high cost of REAL backup systems until after the purchase, or at least until I or the buyer specifically asked about the backup options. And then each different sales company had only one or two alternative responses, rarely the cheapest on the market at the time, and with very ambigious info about actual bacup times, average session sizes, or other realworld answers.) Two DLT tapes to double backup one single session would cost $100 dollars to $200.(the same as 24track tape) Putting multiple clients on one tape is asking for disaster if a tape goes bad. A person shouldn't even be allowed to buy a digisystem without being able to afford the appropriate (usable) backup system and medias for their needs, as this , almost above anything else in the digi world, is a large source of streetlevel bad press. This is as if Henry Ford had designed a car and then told buyers to figure out what to run it on !! ("try gas or corn ethel or nitrosomthin or other") and no fuel available were a really good one! Even the digiapproved backup mechanism list is irritating, as only the mechanism model number is offered, not who is putting it in cases or who has the best price. This makes buying an approved device a time consuming irriting affair with several days of calls to various companies in the back of macworld or wherever to phone sales people who have no idea which mechanism is in their cases without talking to their tech departments and calling you back, or which firmware is installed, or if it will work with MLCD, Jam, Mezzo, blah, blah,blah, etc,etc,etc. ulcerheartburn
Couldn't digi make a deal with macmall or whomever to carry all of the current mechanisms mounted in reliable cases and have a certian amount of tech support then handled by digi? This could bring the cost of proper solutions down by guaranteeing sales equal to digisystems sold to one packager. Try calling macmall with questions about digital audio now!?! hah?! And don't mention Glyph, their products are notoriously high priced for the same mechanism, and I have found their cases for 4speed cdburners and dds2 tape drives to be noiser than cheaper cases( and the cd burner had rubber feet which were glued on, and the glue melted and the feet slid off after two weeks sitting on top of a 2 gig barracuda. Doesn't anyone use these products before they start to sell them?) What about backup media? Couldn't or Shouldn't digi put together a users/buyers group to buy large quantities or various media and allow registered digi users to get supplies at pennies above cost?

I think it's about time digi took time off to jump back a few steps and address these issues which have been ignored and washed over for far too long. The concept of the Whole System is great but i'm tired of having to design my own fuel, steering wheel, tires etc.
I for one would like to see less recording advances and more attention on fogotten issues to bring the whole concept up to speed.


thank you
from the bleeding edge of technology
bleedingedge@ultrapsyche.com

p.s.
-and where do i safely store 300 mezzo 2 gig tapes and 300 to 400 cd's of info
-What is the shelf life of Mezzo data tapes. 3years? 5 years? 2years? How do I transfer 300 Mezzo tapes to more stable media? I figure about 3 months of loading in and rearchiving
ought to do it...Is someone from digi (who recommended this system) going to stop by and help me do this? (I've already had tapes only two years old fail to reload, information lost)
-I've already had cd's that were made only last august (I verified and loaded them back into a computer to test their quality at the time they were made) fail to load back in... neccessitating recutting of certain background vocals.

[Rod]

We use Mezzo Archiver v3.0 + Exabyte drive for backup on our 7100 and are considering DVDRAM for general backup on the 9600.

Anyone any experience of the relative speed of these two media?

Our assumption is that, although DVDRAM may be slower than CDR, it should be faster (and cheaper) than Exabyte.

Rod

[SGorney]

In response to a post on May 15th by RAA about Pro Tools backups, we have some comments and suggestions. Yes, backup is still an Achilles heel in the recording process but it is not as bad as this post would suggest. Glyph has spent six years concentrating and servicing only on the digital audio community. We have provided thousands of tape backup solutions (as well as other technologies) to Pro Tools users. All of our sales and support staff can talk intelligently about backup and what the choices are. Our web site is full of valuable information on backup applications.

The most important thing we do at Glyph is support users. Buying products "cheap" means limited or no support for your specific application and worse, the company going out of business and you get zero service. (reference PCT, Dynatek, PS Systems, Eltekon etc.) We repair "other" manufacturer’s drives that are no longer in business so users can retain some of their asset in the products that they have purchased. Glyph is not the lowest priced vendor in the market today, nor will we ever be. We have built our business model not as the lowest cost vendor, but as the highest level service and support organization for digital audio. It is not Digidesign’s responsibility to tech support third party vendor’s products, although they have been very instrumental in supporting Glyph in many support situations.

In response to our enclosures, we have had several tabletop series of enclosures through our history. Each time we evolve, we believe that we improve the product. Our current tabletop enclosures are ultra quiet, (get out you db meter!) and incredibly reliable. A certain percentage will develop anomalies, but it is how we respond to those that counts. If you had a enclosure of ours that had glued on rubber feet that melted, then you obviously have a thermal problem with the drive below. Perhaps is was a "cheap" model from a mail order house.

Glyph has invested in more than 10 Pro Tools workstations through the years from 442 to Mix Plus. We are constantly testing our products on real world projects as well as torturous testing with multiple workstations grinding the same drives on a storage area network for days at a time, in our testing facility.

We don’t know everything and we do make mistakes. We love this community and market and are rabid about supporting our clients. It is incumbent on us to reply to inaccurate posts by someone having a bad day.

Steve Gorney
Glyph Technologies Inc.

[elbanano]

I gotta tell ya, Glyph rocks big time. This is one company that stands behind their products. And responds at the blink of an eye.

Lenny

[COCO]

My Rorke DDS-3 (HP mechanism) has performed flawlessly for about a year and a half. I use it with Retrospect, you don't have to wait around for scripts to run. I have not had a tape fail yet (knock, knock) but I always double b-u important sessions. DLT sounds cool, but I haven't used one; I think it's a bigger investment compared to DDS. -COCO

[This message has been edited by COCO (edited 05-25-99).]

[noisefloor]

I fail to see why digi has a "responsibility" to supply a backup format. The response from steve seems pretty on the mark - there is no "best" solution, they all have strengths and weaknesses, and the "better" ones tend to be more expensive. Audio data is data, once it gets on the drive, backing it up is no different than backing up anything else (is there even an "approved list" for backups? there's NO reason for digi to have to approve this). If you can't afford the "good" formats, I don't know what to tell you - maybe you're undercharging for the "major release" projects you're working on.

I've used dds-3, which seemed like a decent format, now I'm using DLT with retrospect, and it's worked great so far. I've had some bad luck with Glyph devices (MANY failures that had to be replaced), so I'd just recommend going with a good quality, name brand device from your favorite computer/peripheral dealer.

Mike

(also, drives are pretty cheap nowadays - just getting some extra space can help you spend less time loading on and off)

[Rader Ranch]

i've been using both Retrospect and Mezzo fairly happily for over 6 years with 4mm Dat drives ranging from 10-50MB/min. 4 gigs per tape @ $11-15 a pop ( $400-700 for the drives, i think)...not exactly plug-n-play, but pretty reliable, AND both programs work fine in the background as well.