Backup on mDisc or Tape Drive

[Hazily2019]

STH folks,

What's your take on this? Continue using M-DISC BluRay DVDs (25GB or 50GB) and using that as a backup media or make the switch to tape? Any cons of using tapes? Have 0 knowledge on tape backups...

 

[reasonsandreasons]

How much data are you backing up? Tape's cheaper than HDD, but you're looking at ~$400 USD for a LTO5 drive and ~$10 USD for each 1.5 TB tape. If you don't need the storage capacity it may not be worth it.

 

[Hazily2019]

How much data are you backing up? Tape's cheaper than HDD, but you're looking at ~$400 USD for a LTO5 drive and ~$10 USD for each 1.5 TB tape. If you don't need the storage capacity it may not be worth it.

About 10TB ...

 

[reasonsandreasons]

Ah, yeah, you're in the ballpark. I've got similar requirements and I've looked into it a fair amount before. I was initially considering it as a primary backup solution, but ended up settling on a second box with nightly replication configured instead. It wasn't that much more expensive than the tape solution and had a few convenience features that made the increase in price worth it (no swapping, more regular backups, quicker recovery, box is basically idle most of the time and runs other services). Tape's still on my mind for offsite cold storage, though, and if that's the niche you're looking to fill it'll probably be cheaper than the alternatives. You'd probably save money over your existing solution since the cartridges are reusable.

(Side note: my setup doesn't have room for an auto-loader, which increases the PITA-factor of tape. If you have the rack space for an archive and can find one for a reasonable price (make sure it's LTO5 or later) that might shift your calculus.)

 

[Peter Blanchard]

I've not used tape for backup for years but one I thing I remember is religiously keeping one of three rotating tapes in the fireproof and waterproof safe. Off site storage wasn't an option back then other than physical transportation of tapes.

 

[Stephan]

Tape can be finicky. Lose the drive to defect etc. then you need a replacement so at 10 TB its quite costly. Also not a whole lot of software around to efficiently use the tapes. I.e. get going quickly. You are looking at 2-3 weeks implementation time. On the plus side, tapes last 30 years without deterioration below readability. Maybe you can split your 10 TB into tiers. Personal files like insurance policies familiy pictures etc still go to BDR, your transcoded movie collection is replaceable and can go on a bunch of USB3 hard drives in rotation. ProxMox Backup Server has a relatively new tape implementation written in Rust, maybe check that out.

 

[Louis]

For tape drives, before buying the drive i would check if you can get the LTO software/firmware upgrades. I have 2, one HP and one IBM and even though both are same generation, the IBM one has it's software behind a paywall and can't easily use it without them under windows. I would stick with HP or any other friendly brand. Also the tape backups are hilariously slow and you need either a SAS/FC card to interface with them. But if you are serious about bang for buck and reliability i would go with a tape solution. If not, archival blurays are a good solution.

 

[oneplane]

Wouldn't it be easier to just buy a 10TB HDD? Or if you need redundant backups, two of them?

 

[Louis]

I had so many hard drive failures over the years, i would not recommend using them for backup of important data.

 

[Stephan]

@Louis Go on IBM Support: Fix Central look for your drive e.g. type ts2260 and select the proposed product from list with mouse. Continue. It will show microcode like KAJ9. Click on README, it will open. Notice the URL. Delete the filename, leaving everything up to the very last slash. Browse to this directory. Server will give you a directory listing, the FMRZ file is what you are after. Also no Windows necessary, Linux itdt can flash firmware without a problem. Eject any tape first.

 

[Louis]

@Louis Go on IBM Support: Fix Central look for your drive e.g. type ts2260 and select the proposed product from list with mouse. Continue. It will show microcode like KAJ9. Click on README, it will open. Notice the URL. Delete the filename, leaving everything up to the very last slash. Browse to this directory. Server will give you a directory listing, the FMRZ file is what you are after. Also no Windows necessary, Linux itdt can flash firmware without a problem. Eject any tape first.

thanks i will give that a try

 

[reasonsandreasons]

It is worth considering offline cold storage of hard drives as a possible solution here, either a single drive or two redundant ones. You're looking at a substantial initial investment with the tape drive and it's fairly specialized equipment; if you're not storing the drive itself offsite you'll have to purchase a second drive to recover from a disaster situation. An advantage with SATA drives is that you can plug them into basically any box and be ready-to-go at that point, barring any hardware failures. There's also a risk of hardware failure with tape, as you're basically looking at the used market for anything remotely affordable to an individual.

All that being said, tape is still useful and affordable for a lot of applications--it's just worth asking yourself frankly if it's better than more conventional technologies for your circumstances.

 

[Stephan]

@oneplane Reliability of HDD and even worse SSD in storage without power ranges from bad to really bad. Those two need to be kept online and checked regularly using SMART long test or ZFS scrub, need to be in a redundant array and if defective, need to be replaced. Put them into a drawer for 3-5 years and unreadable sectors will pop up.

Tapes stored vertically in a cool, dry, dark place are made to last decades.

BD-R when not using LTH media should also last 1-3 decades. But write quality is a concern. I found that writing at slowest possible speed will give the best burns. There is a tool called Opti Drive Control by Deppe. If you have a rare BH16NS40 crossflashed to a WH16NS48 with even rarer 1.D3 firmware (sometimes called flash_HL-DT-ST_BD-RE_WH16NS48_1.D3.bin) using a patched BH16NS40 flasher, you can use the software to "scan" a BD-R disc for defects after the burn. This is how I figured out that slowest burns are best for my combination of drive and media. Check the last picture of posting Forum CDRinfo.pl - Podgląd pojedynczego posta - LG BH16NS40/WH16NS40/BH16NS48

You'll need patience and a good eye on auction sites to find a drive.

Edit: I just looked around, most links to binaries are dead. Nice bitrot. That is why r/datahoarder and ZFS are a thing. Not that BD-R as a technology is now in 2023 as fringe as tape, with 4k streaming having captured most of the market. Try Yandex or archive.org or try to figure out who to ask.

 

[piranha32]

It is worth considering offline cold storage of hard drives as a possible solution here, either a single drive or two redundant ones.

I stopped trusting HDDs for long-term cold storage after a couple of barely used WD "external backup" drives died after sitting on a shelf for 3 years.

 

[oneplane]

I'm not sure if we're talking about cold storage or archival here. It might just be the best first hit Hazily2019 had when using mDisc, but the times have changed and may if this isn't cold storage or archival but a periodic backup, live HDD backups might still be efficient enough. Maybe this is even post 3-2-1 and it's just an 'extra copy'.

It could also really be archival backups and in that case, HDDs (and other R/W media) is probably a bad choice, except Tape, depending on the cartridge. But only Hazily2019 knows, we don't (at least, not yet ).

Anecdote: I have some really old (2008) Samsung Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ (1TB) drives here, they have a crappy communication stack (probably not even AHCI) but they still work, still transfer at the same speeds, still seek at the same speeds and all blocks, metadata and data checksums still check out. They are used as a local duplicate turning 3-2-1 into 4-2-1 with ZFS for holding a warm-ish copy of data that is also stored over a slower link elsewhere so local retrieval is faster, but optional. Turned on once a day for a ZFS receive. HDD's aren't safe long-term, but they also can last much longer than you'd expect.

 

[Hazily2019]

I'm not sure if we're talking about cold storage or archival here. It might just be the best first hit Hazily2019 had when using mDisc, but the times have changed and may if this isn't cold storage or archival but a periodic backup, live HDD backups might still be efficient enough. Maybe this is even post 3-2-1 and it's just an 'extra copy'.

It could also really be archival backups and in that case, HDDs (and other R/W media) is probably a bad choice, except Tape, depending on the cartridge. But only Hazily2019 knows, we don't (at least, not yet ).

Anecdote: I have some really old (2008) Samsung Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ (1TB) drives here, they have a crappy communication stack (probably not even AHCI) but they still work, still transfer at the same speeds, still seek at the same speeds and all blocks, metadata and data checksums still check out. They are used as a local duplicate turning 3-2-1 into 4-2-1 with ZFS for holding a warm-ish copy of data that is also stored over a slower link elsewhere so local retrieval is faster, but optional. Turned on once a day for a ZFS receive. HDD's aren't safe long-term, but they also can last much longer than you'd expect.

I have about 10TB of pictures (great grandparents, grandparents, my family etc) and this is somewhat sentimental... I want to make back up of these pictures so if something goes poof, my pictures don't. What I currently do is backup those pictures to a Synology NAS (which is running on 2x HDDs) and that Synology NAS is replicated to another Synology NAS. I found mDiscs on Amazon since they are cheap and burnt DVDs aren't reliable anymore.... I also want the ability to have one set of backup here and another backup set at my parents place (which is literally another state away)

 

[Louis]

I have about 10TB of pictures (great grandparents, grandparents, my family etc) and this is somewhat sentimental... I want to make back up of these pictures so if something goes poof, my pictures don't. What I currently do is backup those pictures to a Synology NAS (which is running on 2x HDDs) and that Synology NAS is replicated to another Synology NAS. I found mDiscs on Amazon since they are cheap and burnt DVDs aren't reliable anymore.... I also want the ability to have one set of backup here and another backup set at my parents place (which is literally another state away)

I would definitely use tape for this application, If you go with LTO 5 (1.5gb) drive and tapes you can upgrade later on to LTO 7(6gb) and the new drive will read your old LTO 5 tapes. There is good deals from time to time on ebay, i prefer going with Sas drives as built in controllers in workstations are way more common than fibrechannel which would need a seperate card.