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Ask Slashdot: ORB Drives, Anyone?
Chris Herborth asks:
"Castlewood
Systems is apparently shipping their ORB drive
(you know, 2 gig removable cheaper than a 250MB ZIP drive,
with media at $40) now to at least two US distributors
(ASI) and
(Wintec).
So, has anyone seen one yet? How well does it work under
non-Windows operating systems? I was going to invest in
something useful for doing backups soon, but I'm afraid to
just order one of these (shipping to/from Canada is a real
pain in the butt) in case something goes wrong or it only
works properly with Windows." Your thoughts, folks?
comp.sys.hardware.ibm.pc.storage has had an ongoing thread about these. A deja news search will reveal a lot of the outstanding issues.
I used to use my SparQ drive (windows machine) for back-ups. The speed wasn't that great (it's a parallel port, what are you expecting?), but it got the job done.
Currently, I'm using a CD burner. I figure that I won't erase my back-ups, so why not go ahead and burn them onto something with a standard format. The discs are cheap enough, about $1 each in bulk.
For removable drives, I'll wait until they come out with a linux driver for those 50GB disks. Keep in mind that they say the discs hold 50GB in compressed mode, 25GB in native mode. Still, at $150 for 3 discs, that's $2/Native gigabyte.
As a side note, when I burn back-ups, I always burn two. One goes into 'usable storage', the other into 'safe storage'. If I scratch a disc from 'usable storage', I create a copy from its mate in 'safe storage'. This way, I don't have to worry about scratching a CD and losing that data forever.
I think you did the math wrong.
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.
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. 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...
Food for thought...
www.atic.ca
They are based in Vancouver and they sell ORB drives. They have awesome prices on just about everything too.
All prices in Canadian Dollars, some of my friends have had service problems with this company, but you'll love the price, and decide for yourself whether service or price is more important...
You're not kidding, I once shipped $80 US or so of electronic equipment, and was charged about $45 in shipping fees! And that was "extra-slow" (1 week) ground! The shipping WAS $20, but they tacked on $25 for "Brokerage fees". I think this should be illegal, doubling the cost AFTER you've ordered the item... I was never told about Brokerage fees, and don't worry, you won't be either!
UPS should go to hell... I hear Brokerage fees are $7 flat from Fedex and $5 flat from US Mail, get it through them!
I dunno, My Commodore 64 Disks still work like the day I bought 'em (16 years or so ago)... Even the one I spilled coffee on... ;-)
Don't worry, they'll be out of business LOOOOONG before they can be sued ;-)
I own one... I have one at work too...
the biggest drawbacks are...
*any NTFS drive can't be removable... so you have to leave it in if you format NTFS
*it needs an IDE ahead of it (under NT) cuz NT is stupuid and thinks it's the boot drive
BUT... it's just as fast as a hard drive and very quiet...
and at $30us for 2.2 gig uncompressed, you can't beat the price!
Most CDRs today are rated for 100 years of data retention (some claim 200 years). I admit I'm not sure how they know this since CDRs have't been around 1/10 of that time. But, where does it say how long the media will last on tapes, disks, or even hard drives. It doesn't say at all. That leads me to believe it is far far less, otherwise they'd surely brag about it in the sales literature. This is why I've converted old audio tapes to CD and old 8mm/Super8 family films to VCD. For really long term storage, nothing yet beats optical. The only drawback is that optical is slower to write (and to read to a lesser extent) than things like SparQ drives.
I've seen the drives available here in
Sacramento CA, but only the IDE versions.
Personally, I'm waiting for the SCSI version.
The first guy was pretty much wrong about infinite
life and he couldn't do math.
BUT, DLT drives don't lose iron oxide during use, the DLT mechanism is completely non-contact. This is in contrast to 4mm and 8mm drives which wrap the tape around the head and spin the head faster than the tape movement.
As tape media goes, DLT probably has the longest lifespan out there.
It's gotta be Canada taxing the bajeezez out of your orders, I (in the US) order stuff shipped via UPS from Japan all the time and see no 'brokerage fees'. Canada is struggling to keep its identity and does so by trying to make imports more expensive in order to encourage local production and consumption. If you're buying anime, though, like me, you're screwed.
BTW, doesn't Canada require radio stations, BY LAW, to play music by Canadian bands for a certain percentage of their air time? This is the gov't philospohy that's costing you dollars.
Go to any place populated by PCs. If they don't just throw them away, there's probably a whole drawer full of floppies that claimed a "lifetime gurantee". Out of curiosity, though, I mailed a bad floppy back to Sony. They sent me back a new box of 10 floppies! Really! The bottom line? Long media gurantees make for good marketing, but can still be meaningless, and a free DLT tape 15 years later still doesn't get your data back.
I really hate to burst that nice big bubble you're floating in, but... Those 15/30 and 25/50 GB drives are not discs, they're tapes. The difference is that tapes are linear (can only be read from/written to in a straight line). If you wanted a file from the end of a tape, you have to fast foreward all the way. A disc of 25/50 gb would NOT BE $30. Although these tapes are not as fast as discs, they are abnormally large. Even larger than most tape formats. It definately beats DAT, even DLT (I'm not sure of AIT's specs). Don't feel bad though, they do kinda scam you by not saying the word 'tape' anywhere on the box. Then again, they don't say disc either. It is unlikely that you will find such large uncompressed capacities anywhere other than tapes and hard drives. If you are working on large files (video, 3D, etc.) or running a file server, these tapes do look very good (not too sure of reliability though).
I WANT ONE!!!!!
Try live video editing off a DLT. Try playing a game off a DLT (that thought makes me laugh out loud - "Don't shoot yet, the file for my gun is at the other end of the tape. Arghhhhbhgh [dead]")
>1.mold that eats plastic
This sounds like a product of the military's biological warfare program. No mold I know of eats polycarbonate.
>2.plastic that shatters from dryness or temperature changes
I've tested this one on AOL CDs and IE2.0 CDs. Dropped them in boiling water, then in ice water, back and forth. No damage. I've left CDs on the dask of my car in the summer here in the desert and the jewel case melted, but the disc was fine.
>3.chemical reaction between plastic and envirnmental factors (paint, etc)
If this kind of stuff is getting into your archives, you have bigger problems. But the really critical stuff is kept off-site in 2+ locations right?
>4.chemical reactions amongst between the CD's internal components.
>5.chemical reactions between the CD's internal components and construction-time contaminants.
Now this *is* a controlled environment. The disc is sealed. Some older laser discs had a pronlem of the seal on the two plastic layers separating arounf the edge of the disc. Air would get in and rot the aluminum layer. But this is an historical problem and never affected CDs (to my knowledge). Yes, the dye breaks down on CDRs but the shelf life rating reflects this.
CDRs lifespan claims are of course off if you incinerate your discs, microwave them, crack them in half, use engraving pens to label them, etc. No one said they were destruction-proof, but archives are usually stored in a better maintained environment that *is* reasonable controlled, so the 100 year retention of CDRs should actually be seen more often than not.
If you read the fine print under `Availability' it says `call', which probably means that they've just put the item into the catalog to take backorders on it and aren't shipping it yet.
Who in the hell is going to have a DLT tape drive in working condition in 30 years? I SERIOUSLY doubt there will even be any CD-Rom drives still in existance. The problem isn't how long the media lasts, it's how long the technology to READ that media will still be around. That's why people are really transferring their data these days.
Title says it all
You're very naive if you think that traditional hard drives should be expected to have 0 bad sectors when new. They usually have hundreds, even thousands. I know of a Micropolis 9GB Tomahawk that came with over 4000 bad sectors (hasn't grown any new ones in a couple of years of service either).
It is easy to be fooled here, since modern SCSI and IDE drives perform automatic defect management. In other words, they hide defects from the computer unless special commands are used to retrieve the defect list from the drive. The Orb utilities likely include a true defect readout because it's useful to diagnose whether a cartridge is going bad.
You live in North America, genius, therefore you are an American.
Welcome to America.
*Sigh*
Why not try DVD-RAM 5.2 GB for $30 SCSI works fine on my linux box. I can not write to it yet but the drivers seem to be coming along.
I do have an account but my password is elsewhere right now Kosh
And yes the CRTC requires 35% canadian content for Radio stations to retain their lic... and yes most Canadians think it's stupid too... but like anything goverment, you stand a better chance to being abducted by aliens then getting rid to the useless tits.
:P *
I'm not sure I agree with your "most Canadians think it's stupid" statement. I know there is quite a lot of support for it among many people. It has a lot to do with your personal politics and what you see as important. I'm not going to get into a discussion of the relationship between cultural sovereignty and national identity, etc., etc., but I'd like to point out that the CRTC is not unique - just because our neighbours to the South don't have an equivalent does not mean that they do not exist. The French, Australians, New Zealander, Koreans, and others have copied the CRTC's structures and many of its regulatory policies.
* yes this is off-topic, but so are the previous comments in this little thread, moderate us all!
>Who in the hell is going to have a DLT tape drive
>in working condition in 30 years? I SERIOUSLY
>doubt there will even be any CD-Rom drives still
>in existance. The problem isn't how long the media
>lasts, it's how long the technology to READ that
>media will still be around. That's why people are
>really transferring their data these days.
Let's see. How long were LP records around? Oh that would be 70 years or so.
I fully expect to see CDs still in use until we're all dead. It's precisely because CDs are a consumer audio format that I expect it to be a long lived format. (Note 8-tracks didn't replace anything so it died out. Virtually no one makes LPs anymore so the CD format will survive). Now granted the ISO9660 filesystem (with your favorite long filename storage method [Joliet, RR, HFS]) may not still be in use for new writes, but readers will be trivial to write since the reader hardware will still exist.
If you're willing to splash out, you could just go SCSI. This would give you a rock solid solution that enables you to add disks until the cows come hme.
Who hasn't felt that sinking feeling when your audio cassette starts to drag, warble, then really fast, than nothing. You run to stop the player, pop the tape out only to find that the other half of the tape is still wrapped and tangled around the various sheels and spindles inside the player. CDRs just don't get messed up this way.
And we're off! They're both holding steady at 90F, but that mercury has only started climbing! We're at 110F and man is it hot! I can see the heat on the CDR if I look at it edge on. It's 130F now and the DLT's case and the CDR's jewel box have begun to warp and drip off. It's now a satanic 160F and yes! the tape is melting! We have a winner! It's CDR by a landslide. Let's drop that temperature down and put that disk into a drive. My god it still reads! It looks like DLT will have to get a new act before it returns for a rematch! This is Howard Cosell, signing off.
"I'm not going to get into a discussion of the relationship between cultural sovereignty and national identity..."
How about a discussion of _individual_ sovereignty? As long as your government, by way of artificial economic meddling, tells you what information can be imported and experienced, you ain't got any.
--
Smash the nanny state!
Sure is a lot better than floppy disks, where I see about 10-20% failure per year.
Would you prefer that we all represent ourselves as "United Statesmen?"
He is a
- North American
, not an American. From the sound of it, he doesn't deserve to be an American."I'm not going to get into a discussion of the relationship between cultural sovereignty and national identity..."
How about a discussion of _individual_ sovereignty? As long as your government, by way of artificial economic meddling, tells you what information can be imported and experienced, you ain't got any.
You're right, I think, to a degree. But this is similar to the debate over collective versus individual rights. It's very difficult, if not impossible, to balance that which benefits the individual with that which will benefit a larger disadvantaged group. I think content laws work in a similar fashion. These countries which adopt such policies are in a way exchanging some of one's individual freedoms (well, no one's *forcing* you to accept the content, but I know what you're saying) for the greater benefit of society, including the individual. In collective vs. individual rights, it is often difficult for those not part of a disadvantaged group to understand why special rights are being given. In the case of content laws, I think it's important to understand what could be lost if they did not exist. Some people don't see this, or don't see it as significant, and therefore won't appreciate these policies.
I don't expect that people will come to any consensus over this issue any time soon. This is a topic of great debate in a variety of countries.
DLT's old news. Throw in some AIT and we'll be talking. Bigger, better, faster, more. What about the new Onstream digital tape drives? 30 GB of storage for virtual pennies (for broke guys like me) - or not?
Atic! Don't ever buy from them. They
have the worst customer service. You go in
to looking at something, they yell at you!
You go in to return a defective item,
they yell at you! You go in and just breath,
they yell at you! They have the worst
business ethics. Not only that, Atic
is "remarked CPU central". They have the
connection in Asia and they bring in all
the remarked gray market stuff. Don't
ever trust them!!! These guys are really
not in the computer business, it's just
a front for their tax evasion scheme.
The way they really make their money is
pocket the Provincial Sales Tax. Up here
in Canada we have the 7% Goods and Services
Tax and 7% Provincial Sales Tax. They
simply declare to Revenue Canada a very
small portion of their daily sales and
pocket the 7% PST for themselves.
Everyone in Vancouver, B.C. be warned!
Most tape drives these days can usually seek to a given spot within a minute
or two. But if your software doesn't take advantage of that and just treats
the tape drive as a sequential stream (like tar does) then you've got a long
wait. Get better software, and those restore operations will be pretty
quick (assuming you're not using an ancient tape drive).
The fact of the matter is that tape gives the most storage per dollar. A
single 4 Gig DDS-2 cartridge costs about $10. CDR bought in bulk is approx
the the same cost per megabyte, but they hold less per unit. If you've only
got 600 Meg of stuff to backup, I'm all for it. But if you've got more than
that, you'll have to swap media or something (remember backing up a hard disk
to floppies?) and users simply won't backup often enough if it's a hassle.
Tape is the cheapest and there's guaranteed to be a tape big enough to hold
whatever your disk system can hold. That makes it the king of backup.
Am I the only one who is astonished by this?
No, you're not. And I'm further astonished that he still recommended
the device after encountering such a braindead design defect.
100% of radio in the USA has to play the top
40 billboard putrescent pulchritudinous piffle or be
bought out by the next greedy fucker with a suit
who can't wait to bring you 'all the hits of the
70s, 80s, and 90s' via digitally edited faked broadcasts
piped in from their bit factory in texas or california
or wherever the hell it is they keep their little slave elves
with their mixer computers. dont fergit the 'no 7 dirty words' and all the taxes the
FCC slaps down on Howard Stern, etc etc ass.
VIVA L'MP3
Bastard! You stole that line from Popeye.
Moo
Anyone with ones of these working under linux care to run bonnie on it and report the numbers?
CDs have only been around since the early 80's and we're already seeing a proliferation of other types of media that hold FAR more than CDs. (DVD for example). CDs will be phased out within 10 years and you will not be able to find a reader for them without really looking. Mark my words. How many 5 1/4" floppy drives do you see coming in new systems?
I've been sort of puzzling over whether a DVD-RAM would be better. I know DVD-RAMs are dog slow compared to an orb drive but how about reliability?
What about a drive with both Firewire and SCSI? SCSI seems to be phasing out in favor of Firewire and I don't want to be stuck with a scsi drive that won't work with any future computer I buy (unless I spend the extra money and waste a PCI clot for a scsi card)
What is the use of having a parallel version of a drive that can go 12.2 MB/sec?
And what would be lost in this case? Canadians would no longer be able to as readily listen to bad Canadian music. They would be forced to listen to good international music and expand their horizons instead.
I have no respect for a government that enforces cultural inbreeding.
Let's not confuse CD-R and CD-RW. Anyone can read a CD-R (provided that it's written in mastered mode rather than packet). CD-RW, however, uses different laser hardware and different software than CD-ROM's and CD-R's. A CD-RW can only be read on a CD-RW burner, or on one of the new "Multiread" CD-ROM's, provided that you have the Adaptec packet-reading software.
Tape is still the best. A TR4 tape, which holds 4GB uncompressed/8GB compressed, is only $20. A AIWA SCSI internal TR4 drive is only $109. I picked up a pair of these for backing up my servers and they flw. On the compressed data they get 40MB/min and on the OS paritions, which has data the backup program can compress, it exceeds 60MB/min. This isn't as fast as DAT drives, but for $109 you can't beat it.
No kidding. TR4s are dead reliable and cheap. Quite seriously, this should be the default for everyone. A TR4 and a firesafe. Do it right, even cheap.
Similarly, I am wondering how reliable one of these drives are? I had a Syquest SparQ and yes there was some hype about it and it had some decent reviews, but it crapped out on me. Actually I had two and was lucky to exchange one earlier. Yeah, it might still be under warranty, but I am not gonna bother to find out because the shipping and handling charges for them to return is $20 or something one way. I might as well as invest it on another harddrive.
This info is on their web page.
I'm one of the idiots who bought a Sparc. I'd have to be even more stupid to risk it again on yet another "wonder" drive. Good old DAT tape works fine for me.
Ever heard of boot proms on network cards?
Everyone's over reacting. This is a FEATURE. I mean, unless the cylinders got shagged, how would he know that he needed to install hdparm?
Apparently, once the cylinders are damaged they stay damaged. That's pretty reliable, even over the long term.
Do the math
So you need to melt and read 53 at that temp for CDR to be declared a winner......
And what would be lost in this case? Canadians would no longer be able to as readily listen to bad Canadian music. They would be forced to listen to good international music and expand their horizons instead.
I think there's a lot of great Canadian music. Are you saying that Canadian music is bad by virtue of it being Canadian? Sure, there's some "bad" Canadian music, just as there's some bad "international" music (and what do you mean by "international" music anyways? I highly doubt that if CanCon regulations were dropped that there would be an influx of music from outside the US). When CanCon regulations were put in place (1968?), radio stations would just play the same bland couple of Canadian bands to fill up their 30%, but since then, the Canadian music scene has really developed, thanks in large part to CanCon, which gave these artists exposure.
>> The Canadian government should die, those bacon eating bastards.
>> You guys should revolt! Oh, wait a minute.
>> You're not allowed to own guns(at least not easily).
>> And you're not allowed to posess dangerous information.
>> Ah well, fuck it. You're screwed.
Yeah, just like those guys who just shot up that school in Denver. Funny how that never happens in Canada.
The US government should die, those hot-dog eating bastards. You guys should revolt! Oh, wait a minute. You're all allowed to own guns and would probably end up annihaliting each other. Ah well, fuck it. You're screwed.
There's plenty of room to the north of you.
You do have to be scrupulous about cleaning the drives and replacing the media at sensible intervals. Other than problems caused by the above (self-inflicted) reasons, DAT has proved very reliable (although I'd stick to drives from reputable manufacturers and, especially, good quality media. I think that cheap media is probably the prime cause of DAT failure; you get what you pay for).
But, yes, of course we don't rely on anly one back-up mechanism.
I received mine today from CDRExpress ($175.00) and other than they screwed up the shipping (It was supposed to be 3 day delivery and they sent it ground, it took an extra two days) everything else
was great.
The drive installed easily, and with a few
jumper adjustments (and zero reading of the
manual) I was underway.
The drive is fast. I copied 272 files (66.5MB)
in less than 1 minute. It did 20MB in less than
8 seconds (not sure how many files).
I decided to use the Orb backup utils to backup
2,297,777,715 bytes. It completed that in 22 mins
and some odd seconds. At 10 minutes it had
completed 1,053,xxx,xxx bytes, and at 20 minutes
it completed 2,122,xxx,xxx bytes.
Once the 20 MB directory was cached, it took
less than three seconds to copy the directory again.
I would say it is as fast as a HD. My internal
zip drive (100 - atapi) took around 1.5 mins to copy the 20MB.
The disks feel fairly solid. Equivalent to the size of a Jaz 1GB cartridge, only thinner. You
can hear the platter "jiggling" around if you
shake the cartridge lightly, but still has a good
feel to it. I error checked two of the cartridges
and it only needed to replace one sector on one of
the disks, so not as bad as someone else
experienced.
It has only been a day, but so far I like it. If there are any earth-shattering problems I will post them here.
I plan to buy a B/W Mac G3 and plan to buy an Orb. I hope to do some digital editing but the Orb will be mainly for general back up.
What will be the advantages of waiting for Firewire rather than the already available USB??
Thanks,
PSD
You say it "ended up grinding off the cylinders on the far edge of the platter"?? I'd be very wary of recommending a device when you've already had one catastrophic failure in just over a month of light use.
The ORB drives are supposed to use the same head and media technology as ordinary hard drives. So it isn't clear to me why they would have special spin-down requirements. This kind of failure would make me concerned about long term reliability.
Even on Castlewood's site it says $29.95 a disk.
Unless I am confusing it with www.cdrexpress.com where I got mine for $29.95 each.
I have an EIDE ORB drive. It works well. I had some configuration troubles with it. Once it was solved, it works like I intended. Before the EIDE ORB drive, I had an all-SCSI system. I can switch between boot to SCSI or boot to IDE in the bios option menu. I have my regular computing stuff stored in the SCSI HD. When I needed to experiment with Linux, I just pop in the linux ORB disk, reboot, set to boot to IDE in bios, and off I go to linux land. =) Sure beats buying a new computer just to mess around with a new OS (I am a linux newby).
I have a CD-R drive, and I plan on getting a DVD-RAM drive. For doing real-work, though, the OS/platform needs to be installed on the HD. ORB is the only thing that offer the speed with the usability of removable drives.
I only encountered minor configuration problems with the drive so far. I run Windows NT 4.0 WS SP 4 on my SCSI setup, and I had to install ATAPI support to get the drive recognized. Another problem I dealt with is partitioning the orb media. I always thought using removable media is like using a floppy; just format it and pop it in the drive. Turns out you can partition the media like a hard drive. And most often you have to repartition the media if you want a bootable media.
Now as soon as I get my hands on FreeBSD or BeOS, I'll be installing them on my computer. All that fun messing around with technology, and none of the risks. =)
- A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
All I see are a bunch of questions about when the drive will be available :-). So far I haven't found any concrete discussion of problems with the drives.
\\'
I remember doing backups on tape. I remember wanting to get one small 15K file back from one of those tapes. I remember waiting over half an hour to get that file back. No thanks!
\\'
I have one here right now. I haven't had a chance to play with it under Linux yet (it's not actually mine), but I don't see any reason why it shouldn't work. This is an IDE version; the SCSI versions aren't available yet AFAIK. It's really nice and fast too; you usually can't even tell the difference between it and a regular hard drive.
:-).
BTW, they should be available in Canada. I believe my dad ordered this one from a Canadian distributor, anyhow.
Feel free to contact me if you want to know more
\\'
You don't HAVE to use floppys. I havn't had a floppy drive in my computer for the last year; the only time the thing went in is when I thrashed my hard drives and replaced them (needed some boot media; the floppy was the only choice). I think the iMac is on the right track (if you don't have a floppy drive, you'll learn to live without it, and one day we can all live in peace and harmony sans stupid floppy disks.), but everyone makes fun of it for that. Some people... ;)
:)
As far as my floppyless boxes, they are all networked, and connected to the internet. All the computers I use that aren't at my house are internet connected, so I can just copy files down the wire; it beats splitting an mp3 into 5 floppys, carrying them around, drop one in the mud, find out another's little metal cover is loose and it gets stuck in your drive at work... You get my point.
As for 5.25" floppys... good riddance. My 5.25" floppy drive puts off so much radiation that it can cook food that I have sitting on my desk when I use it. Still, it's the only link I have to the complete 30 floppy backup I made of my 40gb hard drive in 1992... (the only backup I've ever done; my tape drive has yet to work
jason
Thats 40mb hard drive, not 40gb.
7 years ago, media even 500mb was unfathomable...
yeah. my little 386/16 w/4mb had 40gb...
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/01/27/0847220.shtm l
DCMonkey
Posted by Lord Kano-The Gangster Of Love:
Castlewood is reporting that the SCSI and USB versions will work with MacOS. If they'll work with MacOS & Windoze there shouldn't be *too* much of a problem getting one to work under Linux or BeOS.
LK
Posted by Lord Kano-The Gangster Of Love:
>>It's gotta be Canada taxing the bajeezez out of your orders, I (in the US) order stuff shipped via UPS from Japan all the time and see no 'brokerage fees'. Canada is struggling to keep its identity and does so by trying to make imports more expensive in order to encourage local production and consumption. If you're buying anime, though, like me, you're screwed.
The Canadian government should die, those bacon eating bastards. You guys should revolt! Oh, wait a minute. You're not allowed to own guns(at least not easily). And you're not allowed to posess dangerous information. Ah well, fuck it. You're screwed.
There's plenty of room to the south of you.
LK
Posted by Macaw25:
I'm tired of people gawking over removable media. My PC does not have (and will never have) a floppy drive, CD-ROM drive, Zip-Drive, Jaz-Drive, or JimBob's Super duper magneto-optical gizmo. My PC will allways have a fast, high band- width, low-latency network connection. Screw removable media.
Posted by Macaw25:
One more thing. Does anybody else have a problem with moving parts on their PC? I sure do. My hard-drive is bad enough, but adding some other whirlygig doesn't make it better.
Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:
"...if a tape breaks or loses data before the 30 years / 15,000 cycles is up you get a new one."
Great! And if my wife dies, I can remarry...
The problem here is that their cost is the cost of a tape which is, what, $50? Any given 20GB chunk of my data is going to be worth more than that.
To be meaningful, a "lifetime guarantee" should:
a) last a lifetime AND
b) cover ALL losses
Posted by Macaw25:
1. Go to web site that sells the software I am to buy.
2. Purcahse software.
3. Download software.
4. Install software.
Easy.
Posted by Lord Kano-The Gangster Of Love:
>>Yeah, just like those guys who just shot up that school in Denver. Funny how that never happens in Canada. The US government should die, those hot-dog eating bastards. You guys should revolt! Oh, wait a minute. You're all allowed to own guns and would probably end up annihaliting each other. Ah well, fuck it. You're screwed.
Shit happens. Sometimes bad shit happens for no good reason. Those kids also had pipe bombs, I guess it's a good thing that we made pipe bombs illegal huh? Oh, wait a minute people will still do illegal things if they want to? (Insert Sarchasm) If people would just follow the law we wouldn't have to make any more laws! (Remove)
I and most other Americans would prefer to live with a greater threat of violence in our everyday lives than live as government subjects like out northern neighbors.
>>There's plenty of room to the north of you.
Trees, Snow, Bacon and Molson great points in the Canadian Travel Ministry's tourist manual.
LK
Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:
Scientists discover new form of matter: DLTite. A lump of this substance remains 100% unchanged after exposure to the elements (including magnetism, extreme heat (the interior of a star), extreme cold (10 degrees below absolute zero), and the end of the universe (only tested once)).
The only problem is, since it can't be modified, you can't make a backup onto it.
...unless they or their web site say they actually have them, since this is a new product.
The ORB retail Parallel Port 2.2GB product will be
available worldwide from many of the leading
distribution, retail, VAR and mail order companies
SOON!!.
The ORB External SCSI 2.2GB for Mac and PC and USB
(PC / Mac) drives will be available in the second
quarter of 1999.
The 2.2GB Firewire 1394 2.2GB will be
shipping in the third quarter.
_damnit_
It's my job to freeze you. -- Logan's Run
They have a few vendors that carry them at www.pricewatch.com (go to Storage: Removable | ORB). My friend ordered one a little bit ago, yet I havent talked to him since, so maybe I'll get him to reply to this thread if the shipment has come in and he's had a chance to play with it.
-----
If Bill Gates had a nickel for every time Windows crashed...
Makes me wonder if Castlewood has read the federal guidelines regarding HTML yet `:-P
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
. . . so basically, in computer terms, that's forever.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
or, put another way, I work for a tape backup software company, and I have only heard of one instance in my 7 years, of DLT media failing on it's own (not traceable back to a hardware failure), and that was a peice that apparently was defective out of the box.
I definately can't say the same for DAT or 8mm.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Floppies are good for storing absolutely unalterable files: you can have a floppy with the write-protect tab open with md5sums for all your suid binaries and run a program that diffs them against the current md5sums.
For serious data storage of course, they're crap.
axolotl
Yes.
I just got a computer catalog the other day (don't remember the company), and it had the SCSI, IDE, and USB versions in it.
"In true sound..." -Agents of Good Root
They do make an external. I'm not sure what kind of interface it is using, but there is a picture of it in the catalog I got in the mail Saturday.
"In true sound..." -Agents of Good Root
If you can afford a real backup device, like a DLT drive, 8mm drive, or 4mm drive, you should get one. With DLT, for $50 you get a tape that can hold 20gb uncompressed and is guaranteed to last forever. To fit that much data on orb disks would cost you $3,200 in media alone, and there's no guarantee on how long it will last.
20 Gig / 2 Gig = 10 10 * $40 = $400 Do you use an Intel-brand Calculator, or something? ;-p
I calculated my numbers based on $40 250mb removable media. Even for $40 2gb media, it's still $360 cheaper for a DLT tape.
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.
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.
There is no spinning read/write head like with helical-scan tape systems, but DLT tape does contact its read/write head. Plus it goes around 6 rollers and winds up on a temporary spool while in use.
The only thing the data side of the tape touches is the R/W heads. It's the back of the tape that touches the rollers and the takeup reel.
What ticks me off is they're advertising the compressed space, assuming a 2:1 compression ratio. The media is only 15GB
Water moisture...
I work with plastic extrusion and might be aware of a few weaknesses of plastics. Plastics, especially nylon, absorb water quickly. Water can be our worst enemy if the stuff is not dehydrated before extrusion. After the product is made, water can degrade the plastic's strength over time. Weather resistant plastics are colored black to absorb sunlight. Fire and heat resistant plastics, are fortified with lead based compounds.
Most of my old CDRs at home that are going bad due to the surface getting very weak and cracking. When they were new, the surface was much stronger. Now I only touch the sides and never the top surface.
Impressive, but I would not trust my ass to tape for 30 years.
Yes, the math will prove 100% recovery if there is a 5% data loss in that sector . This is good for signal loss due to degradation, but what if there was some contamination in the room. Oily dust, moisture, prying fingers, perhaps? If there is a 5% data loss that is not uniformly distributed across the medium, the recovery will not hash out.
If it does break within the warranty, I don't think a blank replacement tape would make me happy. I would not trust my tape for over one year.
I think I'll have to look into getting one!
From their site, the list of supported Operating Systems include the obligatory winblows as well as Dos, OS/2, and Mac. No mention of Linux or BeOS.
Syed(?), monstro engineer & founder of Castlewood, left Syquest, which he also founded. After leaving one of the big HDD manufacturers (Seagate, I think).
He seems to be the magic that made Syquest; the magic left with him and Syquest collapsed in on itself after staking its future on the Sparq. Which they totally screwed up. (Ask Iomega: you let MTBF drop AFTER the drive is established, not before!)
So, the answer to your question seems to be, Castlewood is stable as long as Syed sticks around. Which should be about the lifetime of the drive and media-- about 2 years.
Ask yourself, "Do I want to be able to read a disc five years hence?" If the answer is "yes", buy CD-R or DVD-RAM. CD-R drives are as cheap as Orb drives, and you can buy a lot of CD-Rs for the price of one Orb disc. And Linux supports it NOW.
I ain't stakin' my data on some wild-goose-chase engineer, no matter how brilliant.
hehe. I can do Vinal, etc. I know a several people that can do the wax recordings. I know, the exception rather than the rule, and the wax recordings are what you call limited use. 100 years isn't a lot for good technology. There is also is a market for reproductions, audiophiles and collectors. Personal data, however, is a totally different matter. Computers have become a commodity item. When you are done with it throw it away and migrate you data to your new system or loose it for all time.
CD's are different from magnetic media. Also, the CD has been an audio standard for ~20 years and there still isn't a widely available (and cheap) standard to replace it (Mini-Disks compete more with Tapes than anything else and DVD's have a strike against them because video is listed in the title). They are only now getting to be more of a standard than a tape deck in cars. The CD-ROM drive is only now getting (slowly) replaced in computer systems by DVD-ROM drives, which are backwards compatable. I have yet to see software distributed on DVD (4GB is a lot of space to fill and DVD stamping costs are higher). CD's are legacy. However, Consumers don't ever want to have to throw away their music collections or software. You can still buy record players (at Best Buy yet) and probably will still be able to buy record players with relative ease for the next 10 to 20 years even though most people stopped buying records in the Mid-80's to early 90's. The Audiophiles out there prefer *gasp* analog! Oh, and next time you look at some of your older CD's see how many of them were actually recorded DDD. Not very many. 16bit 44.1khz sound is here to stay for awhile. Oh, and when it does change, I challenge you to tell the differance on 99.99% of the home stereo equiptment out there. I look at the THD, Signal-to-Noise and frequency response on most of the consumer audio products out there and I am shocked. "I picked up this kicking 200 Watt/Channel Front 100Watt/c Center 60 Watt/Channel w/ 4% THD, rear integrated tuner/preamp/amplifier/surroud proccessor with DSP effects and nifty flashing lights and these speakers with 15" ported woofer (and fequency response that has more holes than cheese grater), all for $1500 and boy does it thump."
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA
^a^
(And then you won't have to pay extra for shipping. Next after Canada: Cuba. Then we retake the Canal Zone!)
HOOHOOHOOHOOHOOHAHAHAHAHA
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
With all these different incompatible standards coming and going, I'll just stick to CD-RW. At least then I'll be sure anyone will be able to read the media. + blank CDs are dirt cheap.
I sure hope DVD-RAM takes off - it's backwards compatible with DVD-ROM and all CD formats. It's a shame we still have to use 3.5" floppies!
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
"The Constitution admittedly has a few defects and blemishes, but it still seems a hell of a lot better than the system we have now."
Send your friends messages of love at fuck-you.org
Thanks for the warnings, guys. They're out of my bookmarks now.
Brian
Shit, that didn't come out right....but I spent vacation pay from my crappy manual labour summer job buying a cd burner last summer, and I've used it quite lightly. Nonetheless, I've ended up with about 7 gigs of backup that I like to have accessible occasionally (such as one disk that's just a really really big hash table ) and another 10 gigs that is just for safekeeping, and I think I'd be pretty hard pressed to find a network connection to something that would store that much for me reliably.
Plus I end up with some boffo coasters.
-Brian
Yeah, that could get a pile of fixed disk, but it's a lot scarier to mail a HD to someone compared to a $2 CD.
Oh, of course, I forgot about those 640 GB boot proms that get their data off of the CD by osmosis and include a fully functional version of [insert OS here].
End result is, there's got t o be a drive somewhere, unless the troll doesn't install any software. And what with moving parts bothering them so much, they prolly don't play games either, cause joysticks are [ack] analog!
This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
If there's an analog audio tape format that doesn't use a driven metal capstan and a freewheeling rubber (or fiber) pinch roller with the tape squeezed between them it's certainly the exception rather than the rule, as maintaining the proper tension and speed with just the supply and take-up reel motors would be a lot more complex and expensive, and a magnetic tape format that works without the tape rubbing the head as it moves past it would be even less likely. Tape acts on the the tape path as a kind of very fine grit sandpaper and just like sandpaper what it wears out wears it out as well, so tape sheds oxide; unavoidable fact of life.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
And as I've pointed out elswhere, if you leave 2 or more in a drawer somewhere, they breed like coathangers.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
As I recall, the phonograph record cleaning product Discwasher was an outgrowth of the discovery that some sort of microscopic organisms were eating their way into vinyl blood bags and contaminating the blood. The resemblance between Discwasher fluid and soaking solution for hard contact lenses wasn't entirely co-incidental.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
"Forever" is quite a long time. I thought that the time you could be sure properly stored tapes would good for is around 20 years.
However, I agree that decent scsi tape drives are a good method for periodic backups. They're just not good for permanant archiving.
I am waiting untill they make an external with both a parrallel and scsi port in it.
Monchi
I got a letter from Castlewood last week and it looks like at least for Internal SCSI, it will be another 1 to 2 months! They then tried to push an EIDE drive on me. Geesh! EIDE can Byte Me. :)
:)
Will still buy the ORB Though!
[Hey Andrew, get with the programme and buy one with me!]
Time Lord, Dark Horse: The Techno Mage of Gallifrey
The Apple ][ drives were pretty low density as well. I heard rumors that you could format and get at least 70K of usable space on the cardboard spacer that they put in the drive when they ship it.
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
I got the EIDE version a little over a month ago. It installs into a linux machine flawlessly.
The only problem that I had was couple weeks after I got the drive I heard a grinding noise. Turned out that linux never spun the drive down even once in that first 2 weeks and I never used it, so it ended up grinding off the cylinders off the far edge of the platter. I promptly exchanged it and set a spindown with hdparm and its been working beautifully ever since.
I would definatly recommend this drive, just make sure that you either use the drive a lot or get it to spin down.
Seems like the drive should move the head around all by itself to avoid damage like what happened to me though.
um!?
Is that DOCUMENTED?
What sort of horrible design defect would allow a drive to GRIND OFF part of its media? Regardless of how long its been spinning?
ORB heads contact the platter?
Am I the only one who is astonished by this?
Tape last for ever tell that to nasa.
A friend of mine works for NASAs storage facility. They loose about 1 tb each year. Tapes last about 4 years it takes 5 years to convert from 1 tape set to the next + the new data. So nasa looses 1 year of data for every year gained becuas of "everlasting" tape backups!
USB is limited to 12 megabits/sec.... this thing is 12 MEGABYTES/sec
-- adraken
All in all, I would highly recommend this drive for everyone, although I would like to see some numbers regarding percentage of failure, but beyond the initial bad 43 sectors (I bought this around the middle of March), no new bad sectors have come up.
-- adraken
you paid $20 for shipping to UPS, and then another $25 to a broker who files all the paperwork and obtains all the permits for the trucks.
i have no idea whether UPS has brokers on their payroll, or if they just contract with independant brokers. with as much shipping as UPS must be doing across the border, i find it hard to believe that they don't have them on the payroll...but who knows.
"The things we wizards have to put up with."--Jethro Bodine
Be careful to purchase from a vendor who can provide real time availability info. Oh, and check www.resellerratings.com if you don't know the company's reputation.
Indeed, I've had numerous problems with DATs. Believe it or not, in lieu of springing for DLT or AIC, I lean toward Travan right now. Since I stopped buying crappy media (I only use Imation cartridges now) I have yet to have a single restore failure, and I've got tapes that were recorded 10 years ago (admittedly not Travan, but they fit in my Travan drive) that I can still restore just fine.
Of course, insist on the SCSI versions of these drives.
I'm trying out an Aiwa if it comes in today; $230 for 4/8GB, hardware compression, and read-while-write verify. Less that $100 if you don't get these two features. The 10/20GB unit is only another $50, but I didn't want to trash all my old tapes (TR5 drive can't write TR4 media)
Well lookie there - I just bought one! :) Wonder when it will show up here hehe!
--onyx--
I may be confused here as well, so feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but I think the previous post is confusing the media attributes with the data format.
First, the media limitations. CDRW disks have a lower reflectivity then CDR disks, therefore most older drives cannot read them, but some can. Also, I have seen some CDRW disks advertised (have not tried them) that seem to imply that they are CDRW, but have sufficient reflectivity to be read in all legacy drives.
The second issue is the format you write the data to the disk in. You can create an ISO9660 image on CDR or CDRW disks, no problem. You can create a Packet Read (via Adaptec DirectCD) on CDR or CDRW no problem. Heck, you can even create an ext2fs image on either type of disk. You just need the right software to be able to mount them and read them back. Unfortunately for Linux, there is no way to mount, read and write the Adaptec created disks right now.
Again, I may be confused (there is a lot of subtle technical issues with these things), so feel free to correct me if I get it wrong.
Mathematically impossible requirements are technically not against policy.
I vaguely remember hearing about this. Not to detract from your (valid) point, but what this says to me is that NASA should buy more tape copying equipment so that its rate of copying can keep up with the amount of copying that it needs to do.
If you want data to be stored forever, you could probably do it by setting up the network equivalent of a RAID, with data being duplicated on all machines. As old machines died or were removed, new machines would be added, ad infinitum.
Now, for terabytes of data, this would get a bit pricey, but it would certainly be effective for smaler amounts of data and might be worth it even for larger.
Exactly what I was going to ask. My mouth watered when the ORB drive news came down the pipe, but DVD-RAM is available NOW for ~$500. Do I have a drive? Hell no, I don't have $500 do spend on any one thing ('cept my car). But the thing about DVD-RAM is that the standard should be backwards compatible for the next 5 years at least; every new DVD-RAM drive that comes out, even if it has more advanced features etc. will still have the ability to at least read the first/second generation discs in their firmware. So by that rational, if I get a new 'puter with a DVD-RAM drive on it, I don't have to have it networked with the box with an ORB drive on it to get at the files.
Having said that, I still might buy an ORB if they crank the SCSI drive out anytime soon. 2 gig for $30-$40 is just too mouth-watering. I would probably regret it after a year or so though...I have upwards of 50 zip disks just sitting around collecting dust and the occasional MP3 album because 100 mb used to be the right size, and now just doesn't always cut it.
They may not have pinch-rollers, but the tape path
is _anything_but_straight!_ In trying to debug
some problems with a DLT drive at work, I pulled
the lid (Quantum DLT4000) and watched the tape
being drawn through... if that's straight, one of
us is living in an alternate universe!
Oh, and there _is_ contact with the head, or it
wouldn't work. The bernoulli effect does not apply
to something that can (and does) stop and change
direction on a very frequent basis.
- Preferences: Solaris 10 (servers), Ubuntu (desktops), Solaris 11 (personal servers) -
Would it ever make sense to have a "nearline" storage drive that was a combination of, say, a DLT drive and a an 8GB hard disk as "buffer"? Call it HSM-in-a-box. Tape catalogs could be stored on the HD as well as on the tape, along with frequently accessed files. To the OS, it would appear as a random access device, albeit a low-bandwidth one.
It seems that whenever I archive stuff (zips at home, DLT at work), I usually retrieve about 10-20% of the stuff repeatedly, and the rest never or only once. The above scheme would allow near-instantaneous access (via on-HD catalog and buffering) of frequently accessed files. The HD space could also be used to defragment the tape if files were removed and new ones added.
Perhaps such a system would work even better if you managed to combine an Orb cart with a DLT cart; keep the fixed disk with the tape. I think Sony's 8mm format does something along these lines by including some amount of flash storage in the tape cart itself, allowing the catalog to be accessable without a tape read and presumably data on the tape being seekable without having to scan as much on the tape.
I know that there are HSM 'systems' out there, but the ones I've seen are usually gruesome OS tack-ons that rely on the standard filesystem and a tape or MO drive. Having an all-in-one box with firmware controlling the HSM management would make it more reliable and more OS-independent.
(No, I don't know how you'd mke2fs or fsck this kind of a filesystem, but it seems like an interesting archival storage system).
-shawn
The big mistake in backup, especially with large systems, is to scale up the backup to meet the total size of the system being backed up. This is because people seem to believe that image or total backups are just keen.
What you end up doing is backing up 90% of the same data over and over again. All this does is cause hard drives to fail faster and tape heads to wear out sooner.
A better approach is to build a two-level backup scheme where "system" backups (of system stuff, non-changing libraries, data archives, etc.) are done only occasionally (weekly or monthly), and daily or more frequent backups are done of changin data only.
-------
Bill Gates Is My Evil Twin.
Dear Larry Ellison,
Get yourself a solid state HD and be happy.
What I want to know is how financially stable is Castlewood Systems -- are they publically traded, how long have they been in business, etc. If you think I'm making reference to the whole Syquest fiasco, you're right -- I wouldn't want to buy one of these drives only to find out six months from now that the company's gone out of business.
Why would you need a boot prom that big? All it needs to do is send the BOOTP request to a network machine that has a HDD with a BOOTP server and the OS you want to boot for install. The very first machine you set up needs a floppy or CD to boot from, but once you're past that you can get by withoutany removable media anywhere in your network. I'm not saying it's a good idea, but it depends on the system. Heck, with some BIOSes you don't even need a boot prom - just set it to "Boot from LAN first." It's actually pretty nice not to have any noisy HDDs/CDs/floppies on the machine in your bedroom - just the noise from the PS and monitor.
No Linux drivers yet, but those 30-50 Gb tape backups from OnStream look like they could be the ticket. Cheap, too.
sounds like 2 NT problems to me.
Microsuck.
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There's also a web page at www.tatoosh.com/linuxorb/
I purchased two orb drives, and one extra disk (total of three disks). The extra disk I purchased had a sector error, but the drive supports sector remapping, so zeroing the disk will fix those problems. I returned the disk since it was only a week old. This seems to be a common problem; 3 of the 9 disks I know about have had some sort of problem; hopefully their quality control will improve over time.
The drives don't have excellent linux support. One needs windows to switch the drive from fixed to removable (or you're going to have problems treating them as removable disks). Also, they don't use a standard 'eject' IOCTL. Apparently, Castlewood are releasing the OEM manual so linux support can be written for these things.
Apart from those shortcomings, I think the drives are great. The media is convenient, and cheap (although signifigantly pricier here in Australia). The access time is noticably slower than a hard-drive, but the sustained throughput rate is excellent. (ie, I can dd if=/dev/orb very quick, but cp -axv of lots of little files is a tad slower than I'd like).
A warning, though. The place in the US I got it from was having troubles getting the media. So... buy a few extras if they're available.
**if** what you were using the removable media for was backup. You cant:
/dev/tape | cdrecord
mkisofs -a -r
:)
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There's also a web page at www.tatoosh.com/linuxorb/
I purchased two orb drives, and one extra disk (total of three disks). The extra disk I purchased had a sector error, but the drive supports sector remapping, so zeroing the disk will fix those problems. I returned the disk since it was only a week old. This seems to be a common problem; 3 of the 9 disks I know about have had some sort of problem; hopefully their quality control will improve over time.
The drives dont have excellent linux support. YOU need windows to switch the drive from fixed to removable (or you're going to have problems treating them as removable disks). Also, they dont use a standard 'eject' IOCTL. Apparently, Castlewood are releasing the OEM manual so linux support can be written for these things.
Apart from those shortcomings, I think the drives are great. The media is convenient, and cheap (although signifigantly pricier here in Australia). The access time is noticably slower than a hard-drive, but the sustained throughput rate is excellent. (ie, I can dd if=/dev/orb very quick, but cp -axv of lots of little files is a tad slower than I'd like).
A warning, though. The place in the US I got it from was having troubles getting the media. So.. buy a few extras if they're available.
I saw on ZDTV (The ScreenSavers) that they like the drive alot, so I would guess it's fairly reliable. I emailed Castlewood's tech support about Linux compatibility. The drive has two modes: removable and fixed. In fixed mode, it acts just like a regular hard-drive, and currently that's the only way it works under Linux. I don't know if you'd need to remount to get to another disk, or completely reboot (which, of course, would Suck(TM)). Tranfer rates are /much/ better than almost any removable drives (12.2 MB/s avg, 16.6 MB/s peak). Also, a quip to the stated story, I've seen the standard price of ORB disks as $30 plus shipping, not $40 as previously stated. Overall, this thing sounds pretty snazzy to me, I think I'll be getting myself one when I get my tax return back.
If I want to "expand my horizons" I can tune into a Seattle station with the flick of finger.
Note that I don't as a general rule. Canadian music is as much of a mix of good and bad as "international" music is, and some increadible bands just don't get airtime outside the border (Tragically Hip anyone?), not to mention the proliferation of quality local bands that are encouraged by the CanCon laws. The virtue of the Vancouver music scene, in particular, is that it's what Seattle was before the Big Record Labels discovered it. That, and, in Canada, no "[US Company] of Canada" can force out the Canadian content by buying up all the stations.
-- "Perhaps the truth is less interesting than the facts?" -Amy Weiss, RIAA
You obviously haven't worked anywhere where backups are vital.
According to one Digital tech I talked to/worked with, Digital would not have anything to with anything that wasn't backed up onto DLT.
The same tech could tell you countless stories of where DAT's had failed with all kinds of `amusing' consequences. Icluding one where the data was backed up twice on two different DAT's and both failed.
Although I would trust DAT over any cartridge type system any day of the week. I guess the moral of the story is, if it's really important back it up two different places, at least.
KillRaven
Vancouver is still too far away from Toronto... better yet, does anyone know of stores selling this beauty, preferrably SCSI version?
Now I wonder if they're going to make a infrared version after that...
for those that actually have an orb drive, how does it work as a standalone drive? what i'd like to do is use it (on a personal pc) as the primary drive for linux. switch disks and boot into NT. switch disks and boot into beos. switch disks...
any comments? sure, i'll pay a bit more, but i'll have each os completely separate. i could use my hard disk as a plain fat16 drive that could be seen from just about any of the OS's...
EEEK! heck, for that money now, you could get a decently hefty hard disk... consider my situation, with 24 gigs of storage at home (that's only counting one server) it makes things really nice....
Karnal
I've seen ads for some tape drives lately that hold 30Gb on a $30 tape. The drives only cost $299.
Does anyone have experience with these drives too?
-nate
Where did the troll say s/he installed any software? 8-)
-- open source? sounds like the real book --
Thanks for your overview. I have a question though. When you say the disks are warranteed for a year, is that for the cost of the disk, or the cost of the data on the disk? I can't imagine a company providing reimbursement for lost data, but any other warranty is pretty useless since the disks cost next to nothing.
Actually it is UPS that tacks on the brokerage fee to any order coming into Canada.. I don't know what UPS US charges to get anything across the border but UPS Canada, takes the screwem' at the border approch and tacks on a $25 to $35 brockage fee. You then get to pay the goverment there 7%, but that is not part of the fee..
The only way to ship to Canada from the US is (say it with me know) FEDEX, it actually arrives in one piece and I have never been charged a brokerage fee.
And yes the CRTC requires 35% canadian content for Radio stations to retain their lic... and yes most Canadians think it's stupid too... but like anything goverment, you stand a better chance to being abducted by aliens then getting rid to the useless tits.
hey!
what do you have against canada??
shipping from the states is a real pain in the butt for some of us....
Please post an URL of that guarantee. Permanent storage of digital media (by conventional means) is currently impossible. Infact it's a HUGE problem, because it means that data archives constantly have to be moved and upgraded.
If these people really claim that their tapes last forever their going to end up having their asses sued back to the stone age.
BTW - ORB is RANDOM ACCESS, a tape system doesn't compete.
- mold that eats plastic
- plastic that shatters from dryness or temperature changes
- chemical reaction between plastic and envirnmental factors (paint, etc)
- chemical reactions amongst between the CD's internal components.
- chemical reactions between the CD's internal components and construction-time contaminants.
100 years is a lot of time, plus of course anyone can make such a guarantee because they won't be around to take the consequences. The tech industry simply has no appreciation or respect for significant time (Y2K anyone).: Perhaps you should have a look at the data sheet
: for DLT drives and tapes.
Perhaps you should have a look at reality.
30 year lifespan with 5% failure != lasts forever.
I'm in Australia, and the boss just bought one (from an Australian distributor). We wanted SCSI, but we ended up getting EIDE. (They said 2 weeks on SCSI). If we have any major drama in the next few hours, will let you know. *grin*
Brokerage fees occur when ordering any foreign goods, be it from Japan to the US, or the US to Canada. It depends on what's being shipped though (under various treaties/laws, some items may/will be exempt) Brokerage fees are fees charged at the border by a broker to prepare all the neccessary legal documents to import the goods legally under the various laws of the destination country (Such as the Excise Tax Act in Canada)
:)
Note however that UPS will charge brokerage fees for Ground Shipments. If you ship UPS ABW (Airborne Express Worldwide, or 2nd Day), you won't be charged. On the other hand, if you ship via a DECENT carrier (Purolator comes to mind.) you'll never be charged brokerage fees (these companies will either absorb the cost, or have some sort of arrangement with affiliates in the receiving/originating country)
Of course, you'll still be charged your 7% Goods and Services tax, which is to be expected.
Under NAFTA, most brokerage fees are being phased out between the participating countries.
Notice that Software and intellectual material (books) are duty-exempt, and used items (have the shipper mark the package "Used Goods") are GST-exempt.
As for some of the quasi-anti-Candian remarks in the post: Well, at least we can distribute nearly any level of crypto we want to international parties. And what's this I hear about an RSA patent? Not up here.
As for those inconvenient content laws: What do you expect from a Socialist Country? At least I can go to the hospital without being charged...
Granted if I lived in the States I'd be making 10X what I do here, after taxes. Hmmm. On that note, maybee I'll move to California for a couple of years
Now, on to the ORB topic (I almost forgot...):
Does anyone know of any Ontario distributors?
And what about specs on noise output, and resistance to gravatational shocks, and rapid temperature changes (withing the operating parameters)?
-- M. Slager
I ordered a SCSI external back in March when they said they were going to ship April 15. The new date is May 1.
Well not forever, but proberbly longer than the drive will.
We had some PDP-11 masbus Removable drives (1/4 tonne jobs the size of a washing machine, based on floppy disk technology with a ~40Mb capacity) here, the drives were fscked and just black smoked when pluged in, but we had loads of viable diskpacks left
Or words to that effect
Ok, now lets see. You've shelled out for the DLT drive at ~$2000, and you've got your tapes at $50 a time.
Are you really seriously not then taking at least 2 backups of your data (one in the fire proof safe, one safely off site in a fire proof safe)?
Even if all copys of the tapes are damaged by a duff drive, you can have the data recovered by one of the data recovery outfits around.
Or words to that effect
Lets see... No floppy, CD-ROM drive, Zip, etc, etc...
The software has to come from somewhere, right? Unless you got the machine pre-installed with Win95 or Linux, and then used the internet to download the programs.
I guess you don't ever plan to install any other operating system (floppy boot disk usually, but not always, required).
And if you say, "I install it over the LAN", then the machine you are installing it from probably has removable media, right?
My point is, all software has to come from somewhere and not all of it can be handled over the network.
-- UOZaphod
"The unicode stuff in the latest version is working fabulously well. My russian mafia friends are ecstatic."
Well, it ought to! The 1541 had what may be the lowest data density of any magnetic media ever in widespread use. I don't think I'd be surprised if someone told me you could read it by hand with some of that magnetic visibility fluid...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
True, but I have to go buy a gun and shoot my self in the head right away...Cause I couldn't stand being an american =)
peace.
--- "angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night."
Last time I checked...I was a Canadian =)
And I can't remember the last time I heard a American say he was an american because he lived in north america..Can you?
genius?
and remember..dont feed the trolls.
--- "angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night."
There is no spinning read/write head like with helical-scan tape systems, but DLT tape does contact its read/write head. Plus it goes around 6 rollers and winds up on a temporary spool while in use.
---- Politics: Kissing ass and pointing blames.
I had to e-mail the company and ask them how to get it to work. You need to install it under Windows 95/98 first, and use the ORB Tools to change the drive status to non-removable. It seems to change something in the drive's hardware.
You can then do the standard fdisk/install on it, though on my computer I have to use a boot floppy because I use FAT32 on the primary hard drive and it creates a whole new set of problems. I've had no problems with either function or reliability otherwise, though I'm not exactly running it as a server...
-jpowers
Maybe someone here should start documenting things like this hdparm and spindown into a HOWTO-ORB?
-- NZ Christian Music - http://www.chalice.gen.nz
I don't think this is accurate. I've heard such claims for an actual _cut_ CD such as what your software comes on, but not for CD-R. AFAIK, the most stable medium writable by something you can put inside your desktop machine is MO.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
>I'll just stick to CD-RW. At least then I'll be sure anyone will be able to read the media.
Not all CD-ROMs are happy with CD-RW media. Never had a problem with CD-R, though.
Also, all compatibility goes out the window if you use UDF (e.g. Adaptec DirectCD) instead of more traditional formats.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
Ahh, the old myth that "everyone's needs are [or should be] like mine".
A good network connection is sufficient if you can delete something when you need the space and then get it again off the net. This implies that _someone_ stored it. Now, if all you're doing is downloading content (including programs) generated by someone else, that's probably true, but who's going to store the content _you_ create, and on what are they going to store it? Mere users and creators who are content to freeload off someone else's storage can use the approach you espouse, but it doesn't work otherwise.
There are other reasons your approach is not universal. Transferring files is an example. Sure, if the connections at both ends and everything in between are all fast, maybe it'll work. But what if you have to work at a different site and they don't allow outside network connections (either physically or via firewall restrictions)? What if you want to leave your home machine powered off but still take your data to work? What if you want to give the files _you created_ to someone who doesn't have such a fast connection? What if you'd rather pay _one time_ for the drive and henceforth pay less for media than the monthly charge for the fast net connection? Or are you freeloading there too?
Lastly, a lesson from Tannenbaum: "never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes". My employer has multiple OC-12 and better connections to the net (we dabble in 24/7 e-commerce hosting) and I _still_ never see network transfer rates comparable to disk transfer rates.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
I tried that type of strategy once. It was a pain sometimes to transfer files from one cartridge to the other.
Regards,
proclus
I hear those drives are very unreliable.
"I don't like this deep shit about crazy crap"
Atic is another one of these companies I wouldn't trust with anything. They're being sued by at least 5 that I KNOW of, and the police about selling stolen parts, plus they do the "grey market" thing, importing hardware from the states, which invalidates your warranty, and insurance, since the hardware hasn't been approved by the various canadian safety agencies.
the other problem with CDR's is that sooner or later CDs/DVDs/whatever will cease to exist. i doubt there will be equipment around 100 years from now that will be able to play a CD... pretty much rendering that data useless. how many of us can play an original thomas edison wax recording these days? hell, i can't even play an LP anymore. technology is evolving too quickly for any back-up medium today to be viable 100 years from now.
kinda sucks.
If you're looking for a online vendor that does have these drives, just do a search for "ORB" and the SCSI, USB and Parallel port versions will show up.
SCSI Version @ PCMall
They're going for $199 (SCSI/Parallel) & $249 (USB).
>> 2.plastic that shatters from dryness or >> temperature changes
:)
> I've tested this one on AOL CDs and IE2.0 CDs. > Dropped them in boiling water, then in ice > water, back and forth. No damage. I've left CDs > on the dask of my car in the summer here in the > desert and the jewel case melted, but the disc > was fine.
Of course, you have to take into account these particular CDs themselves. Since no one really wants them(mass mailing anyone?), and they usually turn into experiments or coffee table centerpieces, you can understand how the AOL and IE2 CDs have evolved like cockroaches, able to withstand nuclear attacks and possibly even mold that eats plastic.
Would you email me with more details regarding the problem you had and your solution so that I can add it to the linuxorb web page?
If you'd like to post the information to the linuxorb mailing list, we'd really appreciate it. You'll have to subscribe first, for anti-spam purposes. The relevant email addresses are:
linuxorb-subscribe@tatoosh.com
linuxorb-unsubscribe@tatoosh.com
Thanks!
You do have to jump through a few hoops to get it set up properly first, though. You can find out more info at the LinuxOrb web site.
Thanks!
Are they shipping the SCSI versions yet?