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How is this even news? Symform http://www.symform.com/ acheived this commercially ages ago and has even passed from start-up to aquisition (by Quantum http://www.quantum.com/ last year. Even better, Symform has either quid-pro-quo or commercial options and doesn't appear to be some dodgy-looking coin-factoring operation.

So at 185TB per tape with the write speed of LTO6 "at speeds up to 400MB/s (1.4TB/hr)" [optimal]....~132 hrs per tape. But in reality 300 MB/s or 1 TB/hr so about 176 hr/tape. 168 hours in a week.....Next weekly back up starts before the first one finished.....

Yeah, I know, they're not all level 0 backups.....you get the idea....sometimes it might be better to have 2 smaller tapes, than 1 large.

If that is the case then your backup strategy is totally wrong. To get the best performance from a backup you should be streaming your data to the actual tape, however this in practice is rarely true.and consequently you get what is commonly called a "shoe-shine effect" in that the data will be written to the tape then stop while waiting for the next batch of data to catch up, however when the next batch of data arrives the tape has to reposition itself. Obviously this is very inefficient and can add a considerable amount of time to the backup.

To get around the "shoe-shine effect" you can purchase a virtual tape storage library which contains an array of RAID disks, a smart controller and one or more tape devices. By doing this you can create one or more virtual tape drives from the disks and at specific times the data that is stored by the virtual tape devices are streamed to the tape drive with zero impact on the machines that you are backing up. A virtual tape library also has the added benefit of allowing for extremely fast backup and recovery as well as a streamed backup method to tape that fully utilises the tape drives performance..

Is a virtual tape library expensive? The best way to answer this is to ask how much is your data worth and what are the ramification and costs if you you need to make a recovery and there is a problem with your backups. Once you have done your research a virtual tape library can cost from a few thousand dollars to many thousands of dollars which like I said requires you as the proposer of said device to do your homework.

So at 185TB per tape with the write speed of LTO6 "at speeds up to 400MB/s (1.4TB/hr)" [optimal]....~132 hrs per tape. But in reality 300 MB/s or 1 TB/hr so about 176 hr/tape. 168 hours in a week.....Next weekly back up starts before the first one finished.....

Yeah, I know, they're not all level 0 backups.....you get the idea....sometimes it might be better to have 2 smaller tapes, than 1 large.

Some, but a lot of Quantum StorNext and a bit of NerVve Technologies for the video feeds.

for organizations that have large storage requirements you can't get any cheaper than tape

Are you so sure? Quantum claims that their DLT-V4 tape offers the lowest media cost/GB in its class at just $0.12. That's not including the drive, and they are not free. So it's $120/TB just for the media, which is about 30% more than a hard drive. And 1 TB isn't one tape, it's half a dozen of them, so that's fun.

Now, you could argue it's not fair to consumer hard drives to "enterprise" tape, but that's kind of the point. Tape is a niche product, so it might be a bad deal simply because the economies of scale aren't as good.

Reliability? Hard to say. Tape and HDDs are both magnetic media, but HDD platters are sealed off from the environment with a micron-level filter. Tapes aren't sealed as well.

They don't, Xsan uses the StorNext File System. Apple licensed it from Quantum. In fact if you buy StorNext FX or FX2 you can talk to the SAN as if it were a block device as they provide drivers/kernel extensions and tools for lots of versions of Windows (32 and 64 bit), Solaris (sparc and x86), Linux (a few 32 and 64 bit distros), AIX, HPUX, and even IRIX (basically only the BSDs, which actually matters, and the dinosaurs VMS and Ultrix are out in the cold):

http://www.quantum.com/Products/Software/StorNextFX/Index.aspx
http://salestools.quantum.com/getDocPRetriever.cfm?ext=.pdf&type_mime=application/pdf&filename=294835.pdf (warning pdf)

When you buy Xsan from Apple you get block level kexts and tools for OS X of course.

ZFS SAN really only has been rolled out for Solaris clients. Everything else would have to treat it as NAS via cifs or nfs.

They don't, Xsan uses the StorNext File System. Apple licensed it from Quantum. In fact if you buy StorNext FX or FX2 you can talk to the SAN as if it were a block device as they provide drivers/kernel extensions and tools for lots of versions of Windows (32 and 64 bit), Solaris (sparc and x86), Linux (a few 32 and 64 bit distros), AIX, HPUX, and even IRIX (basically only the BSDs, which actually matters, and the dinosaurs VMS and Ultrix are out in the cold):

http://www.quantum.com/Products/Software/StorNextFX/Index.aspx
http://salestools.quantum.com/getDocPRetriever.cfm?ext=.pdf&type_mime=application/pdf&filename=294835.pdf (warning pdf)

When you buy Xsan from Apple you get block level kexts and tools for OS X of course.

ZFS SAN really only has been rolled out for Solaris clients. Everything else would have to treat it as NAS via cifs or nfs.

I really like the Quantum Scalar series (we have a Scalar 24). We use fibre channel to attach them. We're presently using Linux with this device, but it works fairly well.

FreeBSD is "Quantum Certified" to work with many of their drives, so I suggest having a look at their compatibility matrix to see if you can find something with your interface of choice and in your price range.

Sorry but I don't understand the differences, they're both mass storage with some sort of failsafe built in aren't they?

No.

The Xserver RAID - and the Promise RAID - are a bunch of disks in a shelf, plus a RAID controller and Fibre Channel interface; it provides mass storage (the disks), RAID (implemented by the RAID controller - presumably that's the "failsafe" to which you're referring), and an interface that lets host computers with a direct Fibre Channel connection, or computers on a SAN, access partitions on the device.

Xsan is software; it's a file system that plugs into the OS X VFS layer, providing to xnu the standard file system interface so that xnu system calls, and code using them, see a standard file system. It stores its data on storage on a SAN - which could be an Xserve RAID or a Promise RAID or an EMC box or a NetApp box or... - and other computers on the SAN, running Xsan or Quantum's StorNext cluster file system, can access the same file system at the same time. It doesn't provide mass storage, it uses mass storage on a SAN.

Product| Mkt. C | Real C .| Result
Name
DVD . .| 4.7 GB | 4.3 GiB | bse 10
CD . .| 700 MB | 703 MiB | base 2
BluRay | 50. GB | 46. GiB | bse 10
HD-DVD | 51. GB | 47. GiB | bse 10
DLT . .| **. GB | **. GiB | bse 10 -- see explanation below

I have a small one.

http://www.quantum.com/Products/Autoloaders/SuperL oader3/Index.aspx

Sure beats changing tapes by hand.

Obviously, you write the output of a quantum computer to a quantum tape drive

Cuz, it looks like people are getting fooled.


Are they really?

Who here was fooled ...even for a second? anyone?

If so you ought to be ashamed. C'mon, look at the picture of the chip with the lenses on it, the cheesy stickers on the CF cards, the cut and paste screenshots, the video of the solar optical chip (mirror) if none of that bothers you e-mail me and we'll talk real estate. (On second thought, don't. I don't want to have to explain what a swamp is...)

I mean really does anyone think for a second that Quantum would put up with another company trying to trademark the word Quantum in reference to storage devices? or are they supposed to be involved and for some reason they think letting these guys break it to the press is the best way to go?

Thanks for the correction. I was sure that I'd mispelled his surname, not realising that I'd totally mis-remembered his first name! :P

An AC gave this link to Rick Belluzzo's bio at Quantum.

Rick's now at Quantum, the hard disc people. He left Microsoft in April 2002.

SDLT600 is quite nice with good transfer rates and acceptable $/GB. It has the advantage of being able to read your old DLT-IV tapes if you have them. There are of course some organizations that used LTO-1 and for them an LTO-2 solution would likewise make sense. Basically it comes down to legacy support and vendor support, $/GB is pretty comparable for most tape solutions of the same generation since they are based on the same material science breakthroughs.

Try to go to Quantum and see th e nice little error message you get. You'd figure for a company that is using Linux in their work, they'd get the web guys on the stick and fix that.

Maybe we should ask Quantum about this techonology. Oh wait! They ditched it almost two years ago!

Thanks! I was looking for something like the Quantum DX30 a few weeks back when two of our DDS drives got jammed and caused us hissy-fits.

Unfortunately given its size and cost, the DX30 only fills a high-end niche. I'd be perfectly happy with a solution that has 5 40G drives in a RAID5 (i.e 160G) and would cost no more than ~ $3/G (i.e. $500). This would take care of most of our daily backups, but we'd still do weeklies to tape.

Anyone know of a cheap/small DX30 equivalent?

Staying on topic, I do use DVD+R at home for archival storage, but they're still not big enough to really be used for regular backup. A full 100 G backup still needs over 20 shiny disks, and swapping them out is a royal pain.

As others have pointed out it's better than CD-ROM, but we really need larger capacity removable storage for home backup...

Seagate

Western Digital

Maxtor

Quantum

I would've suggested this company as a manufacturer of Highly Rated Fireballs, but they've switched business models. Will Atomic Fireballs do?

This article might be of some use as far as pricing such an item. Also pretty cool talking about setting up a solid state raid, which is pretty absurd as far as going with the concept of trying to increase the speed; but with access times below .1 ms, it seems pretty sbsurd.

This site seems to have a price on some surplus quantum rushmores, but i dont know what a good price on these are, and therefore dont know what a good price would be.

-D

Links courtesy of google.

Yes, it is. And at very least I demand the option to do just that in my OS.

Here's an example: I have a SOHO fileserver I built that is up 24/7 (77 days, 18-something hours as I write this). It's like those Snap NAS devices you see in Fry's, but mine didn't cost $1600 and it's based on Red Hat 7.3. It has 80GB of RAID1 disk space, acts as a printing daemon, runs Apache and ssh for remote access, X in case I want to remote display an aplication, VNC in case I want a remote desktop from my wife's Windows box, Samba for sharing to her machine anmd NFS for remote mounts to my other Linux boxes. It has MP3 ripping and encoding software, and a MySQL database that has everything from a list of ID3 tags for those MP3s to my personal finances to the household event calendar for the year. It has Java, C, Perl and PHP on it for when I write/test software. Long story short: I rely on that machine for a lot of things, and it's very inconvenient when it's down (as it was when I upgraded to RH7.3 and added the RAID pair). In fact, one could argue that the very nature of the machine requires that it be up 24/7. So it fits your definition of a server (and I also use it as my remote access machine, so it often functions as a "workstation").

However, I used the same CDs to install my desktop OS as I did for the fileserver's "server" OS. This came naturally to me and I didn't give it a second thought until now. The line between workstation and server is -- to me and in my situation -- almost completely blurred. As a consequence of using my server OS on my desktop, my desktop machine stays up as long as I need it to. And I sometimes want it to be up for a long time. I often have remote consoles to a bunch of different work machines open, an editor going with files everywhere, half-baked GIMP projects on my fourth desktop, etc. I do personal side projects at night, "regular" work in the day. By keeping all my apps/files open to where I had them the night before, I can come home, sit down, power on my monitor and pick up instantly where I left off. It's very handy and provides a sense of continuity. I couldn't live without that "feature", probably, to say nothing of the supreme inconvenience of having your workstation decide all on its own to force you to reboot it...

Rebooting is for when you add hardware and upgrade a kernel, nothing more. I admit that I might be slightly unusual as far as PC users go, but why wouldn't I demand the option to have any machine be up as long as I need it to be up?

-B

Here's guide I found on Quantum's site on setting up your Linux system to use your brand-spankin'-new DLT drive. It tells you what apps you'll need, and what you'll need setup in the kernel. I took a quick glance at it and it seemed like a good starting point:

LINUX_DLT_Config.pdf@quantum.com (from this page)

There's also an interesting document on changing the "SCSI Inquiry Banner":
DLT_Inquiry_Banner.pdf@quantum.com

Here's guide I found on Quantum's site on setting up your Linux system to use your brand-spankin'-new DLT drive. It tells you what apps you'll need, and what you'll need setup in the kernel. I took a quick glance at it and it seemed like a good starting point:

LINUX_DLT_Config.pdf@quantum.com (from this page)

There's also an interesting document on changing the "SCSI Inquiry Banner":
DLT_Inquiry_Banner.pdf@quantum.com

Here's guide I found on Quantum's site on setting up your Linux system to use your brand-spankin'-new DLT drive. It tells you what apps you'll need, and what you'll need setup in the kernel. I took a quick glance at it and it seemed like a good starting point:

LINUX_DLT_Config.pdf@quantum.com (from this page)

There's also an interesting document on changing the "SCSI Inquiry Banner":
DLT_Inquiry_Banner.pdf@quantum.com

Did you try Quantum Snap Servers?[quantum.com] Disk I/O can be a little slow on the lower end ones, but I've been happy with mine.

The only tape drives I've ever had problems with have been the ghetto-cheap Best Buy discount aisle variety.

Get a decent tape drive:
http://www.quantum.com/Products/Quantum+l+DLTtape/ DLT+8000/Default.htm

And a decent app:
http://www.estinc.com/products.php

Or if perhaps you need a slightly larger tape "drive":
http://www.storagetek.com/products/tape/9310/

Too bad Maxtor has owned Quantum outright for awhile now.

http://www.quantum.com/quantum/pc/pr/pr00100401.ht m

Quantum has had solid state drives for almost 4 years now. They pioneered the field and their scsi SSD's blow the doors off anything out there. And with an added benefit, it's native scsi, no special drivers needed, access times in the 50ns range, as opposed to the standard 5-7ms for even Cheetah drives.

I expect next Xmas there will be a lot of these in the stores.

Quantum QuickView. License it, pop it in your labeled box and you've got yourself a product. Guts supplied by the same folks that supply TiVo & Replay.

Why Quantum? The more drives they sell the better for them. It's in their interest to see this market take off and if providing a reference deseign is what it takes that's nothing new in the industry. Besides, they want to be the folks in this potentially enormous market.

Yes, it's never going to be silent. IBM may claim it's the quietest drive around, but I'll bet the Quantum lct15 is actually the quietest.

I built one computer using an lct10 (the predecessor of the lct15) and then put the drive in a SilentDrive acoustical jacket. That computer uses a K6-III with an extra-quiet cooling fan, and an extra-quiet power supply fan, and a video card with no cooling fan at all. It is pretty darn close to a silent computer.

P.S. While searching for the URL that goes with SilentDrive, I stumbled across a pretty good page about really quiet PCs.

steveha

Yes, it's never going to be silent. IBM may claim it's the quietest drive around, but I'll bet the Quantum lct15 is actually the quietest.

I built one computer using an lct10 (the predecessor of the lct15) and then put the drive in a SilentDrive acoustical jacket. That computer uses a K6-III with an extra-quiet cooling fan, and an extra-quiet power supply fan, and a video card with no cooling fan at all. It is pretty darn close to a silent computer.

P.S. While searching for the URL that goes with SilentDrive, I stumbled across a pretty good page about really quiet PCs.

steveha

How about you folks all send some of this wisdom to the people who are behind this?

Pete McLean of Maxtor, Vice Chairman of T13

Kent Pryor of Quantum Corp, Secretary of T13

4C Entity's Contact Us address

I suggest that a Slashdot effect of IT Admins and purchasing decisionmakers will have more effect on this proposed standard than anything else, including America's favorite passtime, lawsuits, or the threat of illegal hacks. Be vocal!

I'm not sure about using ATA66/100 cables for this eather. The reason they put more pins in there in the first place is to shield the active ones. I'm not an electrical engineer, but it seems putting these cables on top of one another like that should cause some problems. Some information from a Quantum ATA66 white paper:

"The addition of 40 extra ground lines to the Ultra ATA cable spec considerably reduces signal crosstalk and ringing between the data lines (Figs 2 & 3). That allows the lines to "settle down" much faster, thereby slashing setup times in half. And that is what enables the Ultra ATA/66 interface to transfer data at twice the Ultra ATA/33 rate without requiring any other significant changes to the Ultra ATA specification, especially to the DMA protocol.

The 80-conductor cable is mandatory for running Ultra ATA/66. The usual 40-conductor cable ATA cable cannot handle the higher speed, and because the cables are plug compatible, the system must determine the presence of the correct cable. "

Reference: http://www.quantum.com/ src /whitepapers/wp_ultraata66.htm

might be old hat in 5 yrs. Details here.

Prepare to witness the most concerted and massive engineering effort -- both social and technical -- ever undertaken by mankind: The digital equivalent of damming the ocean.

I wrote about this on Slashdot almost a year ago, in the vague hope it might become a featured article: The music and movie industies are working very hard to prevent you from using your lawfully-obtained material in any way they don't want. To that end, they have formed the Copy Protection Technical Working Group (CPTWG), which is working hand-in-hand with a ton of high-tech companies to bring pervasive copy protection measures to your PC.

I saved my original screed on the subject, and it's reproduced below, with appropriate updates. Bottom Line: Do not let them sneak this garbage past you or your friends. If you find that a product contains copy protection, don't buy it, and encourage others to do likewise.

____________________

Recent stories on Slashdot have told of the ongoing "tennis match" between digital content providers versus consumers and technically skilled people. The recent cracking of DVD's Content Scrambling System (CSS) lent ammunition to the opinion held by computing professionals and users that copy protection systems are doomed to fail. The effort has been likened to building a dam against the ocean; a foolish and useless exercise. In Slashdot discussion fora, the point has often been raised, "If you can perceive it, you can copy it. What are they going to do, encrypt the bits all the way to the speaker/electron gun?" If the Copy Protection Technical Working Group gets its way, that is precisely what's going to happen.

I received a piece of email spam today, which actually turned out to be useful (probably the only time that's ever happened anywhere). It directed me to a flat panel display industry group. Among others, one of the links pointed to the California Display Network, which had a link pointing to technical info on flat panel technology. Since I currently earn my living writing graphics card and display drivers, I clicked through to see what I could learn.

I found an entry for an overview of digital visual interfaces, provided by Silicon Image. As I reviewed the headings of the slides, one entry stopped me cold: Conten t Protection Status. Content protection? In a flat panel?? Yup: "Implementation of DVI content protection is suitable for PCs and monitors." [emphasis mine]

Thus began an evening of link clicking and Google searches to find out what this off-handed remark could mean. The slide made mention of the 'CPTWG'. This is the Copy Protection Technical Working Group, a consortium of content providers (movie companies), consumer electronics manufacturers, and players in the IT industry. This is the same group that developed CSS for DVD players.

One paragraph from the above page is particularly disturbing:

CPTWG has focused until now only on "casual piracy [sic]", characterized as what a grandmother can do in her home with her DVD. Piracy [sic] requiring even the level of expertise (and equipment) of her grandson, who might be an EE student, has been excluded from consideration. There is a growing awareness that a broader content protection effort may be necessary.

The most recent meeting of the CPTWG was yesterday, 8 December, 1999. Their meeting announcements may be found here. It costs $100 to attend. According to the site, their last meeting was on 11 April 2000. It's not clear if additional meetings have been held at regular intervals.

The attendance roster from the April meeting (RTF file) lists a very interesting, and possibly worrying, mix of organizations. A partial list of representatives included:

• MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America),
• AFMA (American Film Marketing Association),
• Sony Pictures Entertainment,
• Universal Studios,
• Warner Bros.,
• Disney,
• Paramount,
• CEMA (Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association),
• MEI (parent company to Panasonic), makers of consumer electronics,
• Pioneer, makers of consumer electronics,
• JVC, makers of consumer electronics,
• Philips, makers of consumer electronics and VLSI components (including video encoders),
• Sony, makers of consumer electronics, computers, and displays,
• Toshiba, makers of consumer electronics, computers, flat panels, disk drives, digital cameras, copiers, and laser printers,
• NEC, makers of computers, displays, printers, and telecomm equipment,
• Hewlett Packard, makers of computers, printers, and testing/measuring equipment (oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, etc.),
• Quantum, makers of disk drives,
• IBM, makers of computers, disk drives, and bunches of other stuff,
• Compaq, makers of computers,
• Apple Computer, makers of computers,
• ATI Technologies, makers of PC graphics cards,
• Dolby Labs, creators and licensors of audio enhancement technologies,
• Intel, makers of microprocessors, motherboard controllers, and graphics and peripheral chips,
• Microsoft, software market monopolists,
• Dow Chemical (I have no idea why they're here),
• DVD-CCA, licensors of CSS, and currently in court trying to prevent the spread of DeCSS,
• A number of law firms.

If you download the roster and read closely, you'll see every major piece of your computer represented. There is no doubt that at least one part of your computer -- your CPU, your RAM, your disk drive, your graphics card, your monitor -- is manufactured by one of these companies.

If you look further still, you'll see there are no consumer advocacy groups listed.

What are they all working toward? Quite simply, to prevent you from using your lawfully obtained digital material in any way they don't want.

Here's one example of how they'll do it: If you've visited Fry's or CompUSA recently, you'll notice that full-size flat panel displays are starting to appear. Currently, most of these displays are based on the old VGA analog signals, which are converted into the digital signals needed by the panels. The Digital Display Working Group is working on a new connector and signalling standard called Digital Visual Interface (DVI) that will allow computer displays to go all-digital. You won't need a DAC on the video card; the digital signals will be fed straight through to the display. Image fidelity will be much higher, since there won't be any intervening DAC/ADC conversions. Version 1.0 of the standard has been published and is available for download (PDF format). The DVI spec currently does not stipulate copy protection measures. However, plans are in the works to incorporate it.

Intel is one of the primary contributors to this effort. On Intel's developer site, they have some papers on copy protection for IEEE 1394 (Firewire) digital streams. In two separate articles, 1394-based Digital Content Protection: an Intel Proposal, and Content Protection for IEEE 1394 Serial Buses (the latter being a Powerpoint presentation masquerading as a PDF file), Intel outlines its proposal for protecting digital content over Firewire. By using cryptographic authentication techniques, a device offering digital content will "handshake" with other devices on the bus to assure that digital data is only received by, "compliant devices." In a revised overview of the proposal, IDF Talk: Content Protection for the IEEE 1394 Bus, Intel offers concrete implementation details, including:

• DSS (Digital Signature Standard)
• Diffie-Hellman key exchange for device authentication,
• Blowfish cipher for content encryption, with a keylength of 32-128 bits,
• Digital watermarking techniques to declare "rights" (right to playback, right to copy, etc.) to the receiving device.

The full proposal (currently version 0.91), with lots of technical detail, is mirrored on CPTWG's site (the links to Intel's site don't work).

Intel's proposal also recommends that the copy protection system be field-upgradeable to thwart ongoing attacks, and that it should be possible to revoke (read: disable) a device determined to be "compromised." (The tone of the proposals is also interesting. It's previously been thought that, because of USB, Intel is hostile to IEEE 1394. Yet these proposals suggest that Intel's quite enthusiastic about 1394... Once copy protection is incorporated.)

Intel's proposal mentions only IEEE 1394. However, it also mentions that there's nothing preventing the technique being applied generally to any bi-directional link. So for all occurrences of '1394', substitute 'DVI', and you've got an idea of what to look forward to in your new digital monitor. And your new DVD player. And your new HDTV set. And your new USB speakers.

Intel goes even further in their paper, A Framework for DVD-Audio Content Protection. In it, the author suggests that DVD-Audio recorders permanently remember the IRSC (International Standard Recording Code) of every song the device is asked to copy, so that it may only be copied once, period. They go on to suggest that the recorder could have a modem built-in to authorize (read: purchase) the ability to make additional copies.

In short, through this industry consortium, Hollywood proposes to exert control over every link in the digital chain, from the digital camera, to the disk drive, to the CPU, to the graphics card, to your display. They will decide what rights you have. Even if a court decides Fair Use includes multiple copies for personal use (such as assembling a video montage), it won't matter. Your computer will still refuse to make the copies (and probably fink on you, as well).

This coordinated effort is ostensibly to combat unsanctioned copying (which the industry chronically refers to incorrectly as 'theft' and 'piracy'). However, no one has ever been able to provably quantify the value of unrealized sales due to such copying. All dollar estimates that have been published are just that: estimates, based on idealized extrapolations of what-if scenarios. Moreover, although the industry claims to "lose" billions every year, they continue to post record profits. Finally, despite the proliferation of CDR drives and the Internet, most unrealized sales are the result of organized mass counterfeiting rings, not casual copying. None of the proposed methods I've seen appear to thwart mass counterfeiting at all. So clearly there's some other reason for all this.

The thing that puzzles me most is why the computer and consumer electronics industries haven't told Hollywood to take a hike. Intel's copy protection proposals state, in bold letters, "No content protection = No Hollywood content." This belief is taken as axiomatic by all the players, and appears to be the driving force behind the entire effort. This belief is also false.

Audio on CDs are recorded as plaintext, and the music industry continues to earn rapacious profits. Even the with the advent of CDRs, no music industry executive in his right mind would suggest dropping CD sales and going strictly with cassettes and vinyl. If nothing else, the manufacturing costs for CDs are lower than those for cassettes and vinyl. Likewise, DVDs are tremendously cheaper to produce than videotapes. Videotape duplication is a labor-intensive process; DVDs can be stamped out automatically. The savings in cost-of-goods alone would more than balance against any unrealized sales from casual copying. Corporate shareholders, always mindful of the bottom line, will also demand that the studios move to the cheaper, higher-quality process, copy protected or not.

The fact is that the computer and electronics firms are in the driver's seat, and are free to dictate how the new digital formats will work. Hollywood will use whatever format becomes popular, whether it has copy protection or not. They may grumble about it, but they'll use it. The economics afford them little choice.

We are only now beginning to explore the social and ethical consequences of a Star Trek-like universe where everything can be infinitely duplcated at zero cost. We have no idea where things will end up. But now is not the time to start erecting electronic walls and imposing artificial scarcity. The ignoble and richly-deserved death of DIVX showed -- fairly unequivocally, I thought -- that consumers want to make free, fair use of their digital media, without interference from outside. I believe its death reinforces the future toward which we've been pushing for centuries: Increased abundance at reduced cost. We can only hope that the lesson of DIVX will be repeated until it is learned.

Schwab

http://www.q uantum.com/products/archive/daytona/daytona_specs_ page.htm

(Most laptop drives are around 6mm these days, so I'd guess they'd only have one or two platters.)

Hard drives, like everything else, is a balance: you can get larger capacity, with only limited performance gains that are associated with bigger platters. Or you can get memory-like speed (50 us access time) with "solid state" drives at the expense of cost, and size (available from 268 MB to 3.20 GB). These babies, however, work on SCSI-3 at can only do 30 MB/s transfer speed. Hooks them up in a RAID striping configuration, and it's even faster.

There are also, I believe, some solid state - normal hybrids, where there are platters like in mainstream drives but the cache on the drives are huge - the only issue that a battery is required so data can be written to the platters during power outages.

Ultimately, however, we're going to have to get away from the parallel interface to an uber-fast serial interface (hmm... OC-3 for hard drives?). I think another limiting factor is simply the physics of hard drives... so maybe some sort of holographic sugar-cube storage (this message will dissolve in 5 seconds...). Of course, being able to accurately predict reading & writing locations is good too.

We've had this dicussion about Quantum's solid-state drives.

-Waldo

Quantum makes a series of solid state disks for this purpose. Basically it is just static RAM packaged up with a SCSI-3 interface, but if you really are looking for numbers, you can't beat these specs: sub-50 microsecond access time. 30MB/sec transfer rate, sustained.. not bad.

The downside, of course, is the cost: $68,000 for a 1.6 gigger IIRC. You're looking at over a quarter of a million for 8gb, but if your app really is that mission critical, Rushmore seems to be your best bet.

--

I submitted this to Slashdot's Your Rights Online section some weeks ago, but it was rejected. I think the article is pertinent here.

Recent stories on Slashdot have told of the ongoing "tennis match" between digital content providers versus consumers and technically skilled people. The recent cracking of DVD's Content Scrambling System (CSS) lent ammunition to the opinion held by computing professionals and users that copy protection systems are doomed to fail. The effort has been likened to building a dam against the ocean; a foolish and useless exercise. In Slashdot discussion fora, the point has often been raised, "If you can perceive it, you can copy it. What are they going to do, encrypt the bits all the way to the speaker/electron gun?" If the Copy Protection Technical Working Group gets its way, that is precisely what's going to happen.

I received a piece of email spam today, which actually turned out to be useful (probably the only time that's ever happened anywhere). It directed me to a flat panel display industry group. Among others, one of the links pointed to the California Display Network, which had a link pointing to technical info on flat panel technology. Since I currently earn my living writing graphics card and display drivers, I clicked through to see what I could learn.

I found an entry for an overview of digital visual interfaces, provided by Silicon Image. As I reviewed the headings of the slides, one entry stopped me cold: Conten t Protection Status. Content protection? In a flat panel?? Yup: "Implementation of DVI content protection is suitable for PCs and monitors." [emphasis mine]

Thus began an evening of link clicking and Google searches to find out what this off-handed remark could mean. The slide made mention of the 'CPTWG'. This is the Copy Protection Technical Working Group, a consortium of content providers (movie companies), consumer electronics manufacturers, and players in the IT industry. This is the same group that developed CSS for DVD players.

One paragraph from the above page is particularly disturbing:

CPTWG has focused until now only on "casual piracy [sic]", characterized as what a grandmother can do in her home with her DVD. Piracy [sic] requiring even the level of expertise (and equipment) of her grandson, who might be an EE student, has been excluded from consideration. There is a growing awareness that a broader content protection effort may be necessary.

The most recent meeting of the CPTWG was yesterday, 8 December, 1999. Their meeting announcements may be found here. According to the December meeting announcement, the next meetings will occur on 11 January, 2000, and 9 February, 2000. It costs $100 to attend.

The attendance roster from the November meeting (PDF file, sorry) lists a very interesting, and possibly worrying, mix of organizations. A partial list of representatives included:

• MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America),
• AFMA (American Film Marketing Association),
• Sony Pictures Entertainment,
• Universal Studios,
• Warner Bros.,
• Disney,
• Paramount,
• CEMA (Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association),
• MEI (parent company to Panasonic), makers of consumer electronics,
• Pioneer, makers of consumer electronics,
• JVC, makers of consumer electronics,
• Philips, makers of consumer electronics and VLSI components (including video encoders),
• Sony, makers of consumer electronics, computers, and displays,
• Toshiba, makers of consumer electronics, computers, flat panels, disk drives, digital cameras, copiers, and laser printers,
• NEC, makers of computers, displays, printers, and telecomm equipment,
• Hewlett Packard, makers of computers, printers, and testing/measuring equipment (oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, etc.),
• Quantum, makers of disk drives,
• IBM, makers of computers, disk drives, and bunches of other stuff,
• Compaq, makers of computers,
• Apple Computer, makers of computers,
• ATI Technologies, makers of PC graphics cards,
• Dolby Labs, creators and licensors of audio enhancement technologies,
• Intel, makers of microprocessors, motherboard controllers, and graphics and peripheral chips,
• Microsoft, software market monopolists,
• Dow Chemical (I have no idea why they're here),
• A number of law firms.

If you download the roster and read closely, you'll see every major piece of your computer represented. There is no doubt that at least one part of your computer -- your CPU, your RAM, your disk drive, your graphics card, your monitor -- is manufactured by one of these companies.

If you look further still, you'll see there are no consumer advocacy groups listed.

What are they all working toward? Quite simply, to prevent you from using your lawfully obtained digital material in any way they don't want.

Here's one example of how they'll do it: If you've visited Fry's or CompUSA recently, you'll notice that full-size flat panel displays are starting to appear. Currently, most of these displays are based on the old VGA analog signals, which are converted into the digital signals needed by the panels. The Digital Display Working Group is working on a new connector and signalling standard called Digital Visual Interface (DVI) that will allow computer displays to go all-digital. You won't need a DAC on the video card; the digital signals will be fed straight through to the display. Image fidelity will be much higher, since there won't be any intervening DAC/ADC conversions. Version 1.0 of the standard has been published and is available for download (PDF format). The DVI spec currently does not stipulate copy protection measures. However, plans are in the works to incorporate it.

Intel is one of the primary contributors to this effort. On Intel's developer site, they have some papers on copy protection for IEEE 1394 (Firewire) digital streams. In two separate articles, 1394-based Digital Content Protection: an Intel Proposal, and Content Protection for IEEE 1394 Serial Buses (the latter being a Powerpoint presentation masquerading as a PDF file), Intel outlines its proposal for protecting digital content over Firewire. By using cryptographic authentication techniques, a device offering digital content will "handshake" with other devices on the bus to assure that digital data is only received by, "compliant devices." In a revised overview of the proposal, IDF Talk: Content Protection for the IEEE 1394 Bus, Intel offers concrete implementation details, including:

• DSS (Digital Signature Standard)
• Diffie-Hellman key exchange for device authentication,
• Blowfish cipher for content encryption, with a keylength of 32-128 bits,
• Digital watermarking techniques to declare "rights" (right to playback, right to copy, etc.) to the receiving device.

The full proposal (currently version 0.91), with lots of technical detail, is mirrored on CPTWG's site (the links to Intel's site don't work).

Intel's proposal also recommends that the copy protection system be field-upgradeable to thwart ongoing attacks, and that it should be possible to revoke (read: disable) a device determined to be "compromised." (The tone of the proposals is also interesting. It's previously been thought that, because of USB, Intel is hostile to IEEE 1394. Yet these proposals suggest that Intel's quite enthusiastic about 1394... Once copy protection is incorporated.)

Intel's proposal mentions only IEEE 1394. However, it also mentions that there's nothing preventing the technique being applied generally to any bi-directional link. So for all occurrences of '1394', substitute 'DVI', and you've got an idea of what to look forward to in your new digital monitor. And your new DVD player. And your new HDTV set. And your new USB speakers.

Intel goes even further in their paper, A Framework for DVD-Audio Content Protection. In it, the author suggests that DVD-Audio recorders permanently remember the IRSC (International Standard Recording Code) of every song the device is asked to copy, so that it may only be copied once, period. They go on to suggest that the recorder could have a modem built-in to authorize (read: purchase) the ability to make additional copies.

In short, through this industry consortium, Hollywood proposes to exert control over every link in the digital chain, from the digital camera, to the disk drive, to the CPU, to the graphics card, to your display. They will decide what rights you have. Even if a court decides Fair Use includes multiple copies for personal use (such as assembling a video montage), it won't matter. Your computer will still refuse to make the copies (and probably fink on you, as well).

This coordinated effort is ostensibly to combat unsanctioned copying (which the industry chronically refers to incorrectly as 'theft' and 'piracy'). However, no one has ever been able to provably quantify the value of unrealized sales due to such copying. All dollar estimates that have been published are just that: estimates, based on idealized extrapolations of what-if scenarios. Moreover, although the industry claims to "lose" billions every year, they continue to post record profits. Finally, despite the proliferation of CDR drives and the Internet, most unrealized sales are the result of organized mass counterfeiting rings, not casual copying. None of the proposed methods I've seen appear to thwart mass counterfeiting at all. So clearly there's some other reason for all this.

The thing that puzzles me most is why the computer and consumer electronics industries haven't told Hollywood to take a hike. Intel's copy protection proposals state, in bold letters, "No content protection = No Hollywood content." This belief is taken as axiomatic by all the players, and appears to be the driving force behind the entire effort. This belief is also false.

Audio on CDs are recorded as plaintext, and the music industry continues to earn rapacious profits. Even the with the advent of CDRs, no music industry executive in his right mind would suggest dropping CD sales and going strictly with cassettes and vinyl. If nothing else, the manufacturing costs for CDs are lower than those for cassettes and vinyl. Likewise, DVDs are tremendously cheaper to produce than videotapes. Videotape duplication is a labor-intensive process; DVDs can be stamped out automatically. The savings in cost-of-goods alone would more than balance against any unrealized sales from casual copying. Corporate shareholders, always mindful of the bottom line, will also demand that the studios move to the cheaper, higher-quality process, copy protected or not.

The fact is that the computer and electronics firms are in the driver's seat, and are free to dictate how the new digital formats will work. Hollywood will use whatever format becomes popular, whether it has copy protection or not. They may grumble about it, but they'll use it. The economics afford them little choice.

We are only now beginning to explore the social and ethical consequences of a Star Trek-like universe where everything can be infinitely duplcated at zero cost. We have no idea where things will end up. But now is not the time to start erecting electronic walls and imposing artificial scarcity. The ignoble and richly-deserved death of DIVX showed -- fairly unequivocally, I thought -- that consumers want to make free, fair use of their digital media, without interference from outside. I believe its death reinforces the future toward which we've been pushing for centuries: Increased abundance at reduced cost.

Nevertheless, the CPTWG and the organizations supporting it are blindly moving forward. It may turn out it's impossible to dam the ocean, but they're gearing up to give it one hell of a try. We can only hope that the lesson of DIVX will be repeated until it is learned.

Schwab

1 - Solid State HDs aren't new. I saw a review of one of the first ones in Boot about a year ago.

2 - EEPROM is expensive and slow. That's why it's not used for solid state hard drives. Usually, PC100 SDRAM is used, with a battery pack and a regular magnetic hard drive. When the power goes out, the battery pack keeps the data in the RAM while the hard drive makes a copy of the data. Protection of data in a power outage is essential for these things because you generally only can afford and only need a solid state hard drive for a server. The ones Quantum makes can do sustained 30 MB/sec off the RAM and average seek times of 3 - The ones Quantum make (the only ones I've seen, I don't work for Quantum) go up to 3.2 GB, although I'm sure the prices are all 5 digits.

4 - Heat? The way hard drives are manufactured now, the aluminum is just the actual platter and doesn't carry any data. All the data is on an iron oxide coating. (that's why hard drive platters are yellow-orange) My understanding is that these new drives would be the same on the outside (metal casing) but use plastic instead of aluminum - plastic platters coated also with iron oxide. Even so, the main cause of heat in hard drives is from air resistance to the platter/heads over the platter, so the plastic might still be affected. Might be interesting to see what happens. I run 7200 and 10000 RPM hard drives and I've never had a problem with heat though. Warm to the touch, but not hot.

Jonathan Wang

Sure. It's all in Video4Linux or V4L2. The heroic Alan Cox has been hacking on drivers for the open-source LML33 and similar Iomega Buz MJPEG compression cards. This'd allow you to record compressed video to HDD.

MPEG2 has some licensing problems, and the owners are leery about open-source versions of their security measures, but work is progressing.

I don't know about that double-headed HDD one fellow hinted at, but good caching, a quiet HDD and a well-designed custom filesystem may make that unneccessary.

Quantum has a new technology caled QuickView that might be that double-head dealie. Should be fun to write drivers for.

The 20 GB tape capacity you reported and the 2.0 GB capacity of the ORB disks means that 10 disks would be required. 10 disks at $40 per disk is $400 not the $3,200 you claimed.

Whoops. Accidentally based my numbers on the 250mb removable media that was also discussed in the slashdot blurb. DLT4000 is still $360 cheaper than Orb as a backup medium. DLT7000 is even cheaper; it crams 35gb onto the same $50 tape.

Also magnetic media, be it tape or disk, does not last forever. There is a reliable life span of about 10 years and it can be usable after that for many years. Have you ever watched a video tape recorded in 1983? Listed to a cassette from 1975? You will see what I mean, loss in quality due to degradation.

This severe loss in sound/video quality is caused by two things: 1. the low quality of consumer grade cassettes, and 2. the nature of helical scan playback and recording devices, which wrap the tape through a complex path of capstains, pinch rollers and rotating heads. DLT has a straight tape path, and the only thing that touches the data side of the tape is a single, fixed head assembly.

Remember, your backup data wont degrade - it will be unuseable. And everytime you use the tape more iron oxide comes off of the tape lowering it's lifespan...

DLT tapes lose very few metal particulates during playback because the data side of the tape comes in contact only with the read/write head and nothing else. DLT is unlike an audio casette player, which squeezes the tape through rubber pinch rollers that touch both sides of the tape, or a VCR, which rubs the tape up agaist a rotating head. Also, the data on DLT tapes is protected by reid-solomon error correction which enables all but the most severely damaged tapes to be recovered.

Because of careful design and testing, DLT tapes are specified to last more than 30 years with less than 5% demagnetization and 15,000 backup/restore cycles. Tapes are protected by a lifetime limited warranty and will be replaced if they fail before the rating. See the DLT Data Sheet for details.

Perhaps you should have a look at the data sheet for DLT drives and tapes. The data sheet states that the tapes are good for at least 30 years and can be used for 15,000 backup/restore cycles involving up to 1,000,000 media passes. The data is additionally protected by reid-solomon encoding so that areas with small data loss or damage can be recovered. The media has a lifetime limited warranty -- if a tape breaks or loses data before the 30 years / 15,000 cycles is up you get a new one.

Even though access speed isn't as much of an issue for backup devices, a DLT4000 drive is by no means slow. It can move up to 1.5mB/sec, and seek to any position on the tape in aproximately 60 seconds. Higher end DLT7000 drives are faster and can record more data (35gB) onto the same tape.

It's hot pluggable.

It does not need a computer: camera to computer works as well as camera to storage.

And Digital VCR to TV ;) Hey maybe we will use ieee1394 hard drives for weekly taping, instead of tapes. It's easier to zap commerials that way.