When did you do your last backup? Most users will probably have to think about it - and many will come to the conclusion that they haven't created any backups at all. Please don't forget that a simple virus infection, faulty hardware, or accidental deletion or modification of files can kill important data in an instant. The loss of personal data is bad enough, but for companies, this can cripple your business beyond repair within seconds!
Take the time to do backups, at least weekly. And the more you change your data, the more often you should replicate it to secure media. The easiest way to get backups done is a simple file copy onto another hard drive or recordable discs. But if you want a more comfortable and more powerful solution - including incremental backups, scheduled backups, varying backups and multiple target media - you can't get around purchasing a professional product.
Magnetic tape has a very long history of storing data for computer use. Even as far back as 1951, tapes were used in conjunction with one of the earliest computers, the UNIVAC I. Popular culture has firmly associated computers with magnetic tape, and since the 1970s motion pictures have been depicting computers as large boxes with huge reels of magnetic tape spinning intermittently. In the 1980s, many common PCs (like the Commodore Vic 20) used audio tape drives as their primary storage method, running programs off them in the same way that PCs use hard disks today.
By nature, a tape drive will have dismal access times, as it has to wind the reel to a precise spot on the tape to read or write a specific file. With the advent of floppy and hard disk drives - which can access different files with much greater ease than a long, linear tape - the magnetic tape drive gained some humbling competition. Magnetic tape manufacturers therefore focused on the media's main strength, which is the large potential storage capacity it offers. Since then, magnetic tape drives have become relegated to large-scale backup use, and have been an integral part of archive storage ever since.
Fast forward to the present, and modern high-capacity tape drives. We took a look at two current Tandberg streaming tape drives with up to 200 GB uncompressed capacity.
Break Free: From DLT To LTO
For some time now, the de facto standard magnetic tape format has been DLT, or Digital Linear Tape. The DLT format was brought to market in the mid-1980s, and the standard was subsequently purchased by Quantum Corporation, who currently licenses the technology to other companies. Since the new millennium, however, a competing standard has been making some real headway, and will perhaps emerge as the next standard in the years to come: Linear Tape Open (LTO). As its name suggests, LTO was created as an open standard to combat proprietary formats like DLT, which are expensive for manufacturers because of the licensing fees they require.
LTO was developed by some big names in the storage industry, notably IBM, HP and Seagate. It's an evolving standard, the goal of which is to double capacity and increase speed every generation. It is also designed to be backward compatible, so each new generation of drives is capable of reading tapes written by drives from the previous two generations, and even able to write to tapes from the previous generation. This upgrade path makes LTO very attractive to IT professionals.
The first LTO standard, LTO-1, was released in 2000, with a maximum data capacity of 100 GB and a maximum speed of 20 MB/s. Both the capacity and speed were doubled to 200 GB and 40 MB/s in the second LTO-2 standard, which was introduced in 2002. The current standard is LTO-3, released in 2005, and once again it offers double the previous generation's capacity and speed: 400 GB capacity and 80 MB/s maximum transfer speed.
slide show: Tandberg 420LTO and 220LTO Streamers
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We tested two LTO tape drives from Tandberg: the internal 420LTO (an LTO-2 drive), and the external 220LTO (an LTO-1 drive); note that both drives are available as internal or external models. The drives are heavy and have a sturdy feel to them, and definitely left the impression that they are robust, which is further evidenced by Tandberg's three-year warranty. First, let's have a look at Tandberg's 420LTO, its internal LTO-2 standard drive.
Tandberg 420LTO: 200 GB, Internal
With LTO being an open standard, some drive manufacturers try to differentiate their products by specializing in certain features. Tandberg has concentrated on low power and small dimensions in its 420LTO drives. With an advertised 18 W operating power consumption, the 420LTO needs no fan, and it fits into a standard half-height 5.25" drive bay.
Those reading the marketing materials may be a bit confused by the advertised specifications of 400 GB capacity and 48 MB/s transfer speed. Pay close attention to those asterisks, however, because these advertised speeds assume a 2:1 hardware data compression ratio. The inline hardware compression is part of the drive (more on that later), but this means native uncompressed specifications of 200 GB capacity and 24 MB/s transfer can be expected from the unit. That 24 MB/s is shy of the LTO-2 standard's 40 MB/s transfer rate, so maybe that's where Tandberg made the tradeoff to get the drive to work with low power, low heat, and small size.
Tandberg 220LTO: 100 GB, External
The second drive we tested was Tandberg's external version of their 220LTO, a LTO-1 standard drive.
The 220LTO appears to be a 5.25" internal drive in an external case, which is probably exactly what it is. Similar to its 420LTO cousin, the 220LTO advertises an operating power consumption of 18 watts. The 220LTO's capacity is half that of the 420LTO, as it is based on the LTO-1 standard. It has a native uncompressed capacity of 100 GB and transfer rate of 16 MB/s.
Other similarities between the drives abound: both sport a 64 MB memory buffer, which is a good amount; memory buffer is important in tape drives. Also, they both utilize the SCSI Ultra160 interface. SCSI controllers are par for the course on server motherboards so this shouldn't be an issue given the drives' typical application. Finally, both drives are a bit loud when operating, but due to their intended use this shouldn't be much of a problem - people probably won't be working in the same room with them, for the most part.
As noted above, these Tandberg LTO drives both include smart inline compression hardware. This hardware is set up to detect files that won't compress well and bypass the hardware compression scheme to allow for more speed when it isn't needed. Files that won't compress well with the inline hardware would be previously compressed files, such as video files or software-compressed files like .ZIP or .RAR archives. While software compressed files use much less space, Tandberg's inline hardware compression works in real time and is much faster than compressing files before archiving them.
slide show: Tandberg 420LTO and 220LTO Streamers
You can't use a tape drive without special backup software, so Tandberg bundles Symantec Veritas Backup Exec QuickStart Edition 10d with its LTO drives. Veritas Backup Exec is an excellent program; our only complaint is that before you can use it you are forced to register and give an enormous amount of personal data to Symantec.

Registration...

...and more registration.
Unfortunately, this is par for the course all too often nowadays. Fortunately, the Veritas Backup software works very well, and allows for a huge number of storage options. You can rotate media and schedule different backup jobs, and most storage operations can be done with easy-to-use wizards that handle tasks such as device configuration or the creation of backup jobs.





slide show: Tandberg 420LTO and 220LTO Streamers





The overwrite protection period is a nice add-on that prevents accidental destruction of existing backups within a given time frame.

The append period defines for how long the user may add data to an existing backup set. A good example would be a weekly backup, which is used for a complete working week - and locked away after that. All future backups would have to be stored in a new backup set.



slide show: Tandberg 420LTO and 220LTO Streamers
| System Hardware | |
|---|---|
| Processor(s) | 2x Intel Xeon Processor (Nocona core)
3.6 GHz, FSB800, 1 MB L2 Cache |
| Platform | Asus NCL-DS (Socket 604)
Intel E7520 Chipset, BIOS 1005 |
| RAM | Corsair CM72DD512AR-400 (DDR2-400 ECC, reg.)
2x 512 MB, CL3-3-3-10 Timings |
| System Hard Drive | Western Digital Caviar WD1200JB
120 GB, 7,200 rpm, 8 MB Cache, UltraATA/100 |
| Mass Storage Controller(s) | Intel 82801EB UltraATA/100 Controller (ICH5)
- Promise SATA 300TX4 Driver 1.0.0.33 - Adaptec AIC-7902B Ultra320 Driver 3.0 - Adaptec 48300 8 port PCI-X SAS Controller Driver 1.1.5472 - Adaptec 4800 8 port PCI-X SAS Controller Driver 5.1.0.8360 Firmware 5.1.0.8375 - LSI Logic SAS3442X 8 port PCI-X SAS Controller Driver 1.21.05 BIOS 6.01 |
| Storage Systems | Adaptec Storage Enclosure 335SAS
Internal 4-bay hot-swap drive chassis Adaptec SANbloc S50 JBOD
|
| Networking | Broadcom BCM5721 On-Board Gigabit Ethernet NIC |
| Graphics Card | On-Board Graphics
ATI RageXL, 8 MB |
| Benchmarks | |
| Performance-Messungen | c’t h2benchw 3.6 |
| I/O Performance | IOMeter 2003.05.10
Fileserver-Benchmark Webserver-Benchmark Database-Benchmark Workstation-Benchmark |
| System Software & Drivers | |
| OS | Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition, Service Pack 1 |
| Platform Driver | Intel Chipset Installation Utility 7.0.0.1025 |
| Graphics Driver | Default Windows Graphics Driver |
Test Results
Our storage benchmark involves moving a lot of big files, but also over 10,000 files smaller than 50 kB. This mix should give us a good idea of the drives’ real-world performance.
No big surprises here - performance is pretty close to the advertised native specifications.
The Tandberg 420LTO advertised native transfer rates of 24 MB/s, and it managed to hit 20.8 MB/s in our tests. While that’s very close to the claimed figures, we wonder why it’s so far from the LTO-2 standard, which should be 40 MB/s. Once again, we can only assume that the reduced performance is part of the trade-off that Tandberg made to get the drive small and power-miserly.
The external 220LTO is based on the older LTO-1 standard, but managed 14.6 MB/s, which is very close to its advertised 16 MB/s specification, and acceptably close to the LTO-1 standard’s 20 MB/s specification. Of course, as an LTO-1 drive it also only has half the capacity of the 420LTO.
slide show : Tandberg 420LTO and 220LTO Streamers
Tandberg has produced some very nice LTO solutions with its 420LTO and 220LTO drives. Both are solid and dependable units, easy on the power and space requirements, and both come complete with all the hardware and software they need to get going - with the exception of a SCSI interface. It would be nice to see other interfaces, since small businesses might not want the extra cost of a SCSI host adapter for the sole purpose of doing backups.
If you're choosing between the two, the advantage of the 420LTO over the 220LTO is its higher storage capacity. As far as practical transfer speed, the 420LTO's isn't all that much faster than the 220LTO's, so that's not something upon which we would base a purchase decision. But backup capacity is crucial, and only you know if 100 GB uncompressed storage space per tape will be enough for your needs; if it is, the 220LTO is a fine choice.
If you need the extra 100 GB of capacity, the 420LTO is also a great option, although we'd have preferred to see higher transfer rates. But like all computer hardware, there's always a faster option available - Tandberg has an LTO-3 drive on the market - you just have to pay more for it.
Editor's Opinion
I hope the day arrives in the not-too-distant future when tape backup drives with 100 GB or higher capacities reach the home consumer market. With consumer hard disks of 400 GB common, optical backups on DVDs are on the verge of becoming useless, and people are resorting to buying extra hard disks to back up their data in case of a hard drive failure. A 100 GB consumer tape drive would solve a lot of problems, for me anyway, although other storage media such as HD-DVD or Blu-Ray discs could be another solution.
slide show: Tandberg 420LTO and 220LTO Streamers