Backup Tape Drive for Mac?
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This article is a few years old,.. but leads me to ask - how much money are you willing to spend? $4,000 just for the drive?
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Looks like 2TB is the highest you can go.
I have a couple of RDX drives we used to use. They worked well when we needed them.
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This shows as saying will work with any Thunderbolt -
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@gjacobse said:
This shows as saying will work with any Thunderbolt -
Starts at $3,600 for the drive and a single 2.5GB tape. Looks like you can get new LTO-6 tapes for ~$35, which is really good for the capacity if you already have a drive.
I can pickup 3TB USB3 drives for ~$100 each. 3TB USB3 That's a lot of USB3 drives to make tape worth it. Dunno if it makes sense for you or not, just saying the entry price for tape is a tough pill to swallow.
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Haven't seen one. But what kind of tape are you seeking? LTO5?
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@travisdh1 said:
@gjacobse said:
This shows as saying will work with any Thunderbolt -
Starts at $3,600 for the drive and a single 2.5GB tape. Looks like you can get new LTO-6 tapes for ~$35, which is really good for the capacity if you already have a drive.
I can pickup 3TB USB3 drives for ~$100 each. 3TB USB3 That's a lot of USB3 drives to make tape worth it. Dunno if it makes sense for you or not, just saying the entry price for tape is a tough pill to swallow.
That one drive is going to cost insane because.... It's main target audience is creative professionals on a mac. So it costs 4x as much as others.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Haven't seen one. But what kind of tape are you seeking? LTO5?
LTO4 or newer. That RDX stuff might just work though. Looks pretty good and $200 even better.
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@Jason said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Haven't seen one. But what kind of tape are you seeking? LTO5?
LTO4 or newer. That RDX stuff might just work though. Looks pretty good and $200 even better.
Remember Jazz drives? RDX drives were kind of the same idea. I think they just have the electronics in the dock instead of the electronics and drive heads like the Zip/Jazz drives had.
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@travisdh1 said:
@Jason said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Haven't seen one. But what kind of tape are you seeking? LTO5?
LTO4 or newer. That RDX stuff might just work though. Looks pretty good and $200 even better.
Remember Jazz drives? RDX drives were kind of the same idea. I think they just have the electronics in the dock instead of the electronics and drive heads like the Zip/Jazz drives had.
Jazz drives were floppies. RDX are hard drives.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@travisdh1 said:
@Jason said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Haven't seen one. But what kind of tape are you seeking? LTO5?
LTO4 or newer. That RDX stuff might just work though. Looks pretty good and $200 even better.
Remember Jazz drives? RDX drives were kind of the same idea. I think they just have the electronics in the dock instead of the electronics and drive heads like the Zip/Jazz drives had.
Jazz drives were floppies. RDX are hard drives.
But are they like Tapes when they mount and protected better from Crypto than a normal hardddrive? from what I read they aren't just a normal HDD and not anything can write to it.
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@Jason said:
Remember Jazz drives? RDX drives were kind of the same idea. I think they just have the electronics in the dock instead of the electronics and drive heads like the Zip/Jazz drives had.
Jazz drives were floppies. RDX are hard drives.
But are they like Tapes when they mount and protected better from Crypto than a normal hardddrive?
Floppy, hard and tape would all be the same here - offline / cold when not taking backups. It's not that something is a hard drive is the issue, it is that it is always online that puts you at risk.
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@Jason said:
from what I read they aren't just a normal HDD and not anything can write to it.
RDX are pretty much a normal hard drive - just in a very hardy enclosure that is meant to be jostled around in transit and meant to be plugged and unplugged often.
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@Jason said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@travisdh1 said:
@Jason said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Haven't seen one. But what kind of tape are you seeking? LTO5?
LTO4 or newer. That RDX stuff might just work though. Looks pretty good and $200 even better.
Remember Jazz drives? RDX drives were kind of the same idea. I think they just have the electronics in the dock instead of the electronics and drive heads like the Zip/Jazz drives had.
Jazz drives were floppies. RDX are hard drives.
But are they like Tapes when they mount and protected better from Crypto than a normal hardddrive?
If you're using LTFS, tapes aren't safer from Crypto Ware than Hard Drives. RDX will take more jostling around than portable hard drives, but the only thing to make any of these things safe from Crypto is to not have it mounted/plugged in.
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Right, the RDX drives are simply hard drives. You can access them just like a USB hard drive. Except you can eject the cartridge and throw another one in.
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@travisdh1 said:
If you're using LTFS, tapes aren't safer from Crypto Ware than Hard Drives.
Depends on how you have them setup.. If you do it the normal why Crypto can't even get to them. If you have them setup in some way to mount as a drive then yes, it can get to them. Otherwise you need software and passwords to get to them as you encrypt them already.
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@BRRABill said:
Right, the RDX drives are simply hard drives. You can access them just like a USB hard drive. Except you can eject the cartridge and throw another one in.
Might as well get a USB 3.0 Dock then.
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@Jason said:
@travisdh1 said:
If you're using LTFS, tapes aren't safer from Crypto Ware than Hard Drives.
Depends on how you have them setup.. If you do it the normal why Crypto can't even get to them. If you have them setup in some way to mount as a drive then yes, it can get to them. Otherwise you need software and passwords to get to them as you encrypt them already.
I can do that for normal hard drives too. Problem is, once you attach them you are past those securities.
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@Jason said:
@BRRABill said:
Right, the RDX drives are simply hard drives. You can access them just like a USB hard drive. Except you can eject the cartridge and throw another one in.
Might as well get a USB 3.0 Dock then.
The purpose of RDX is to make a mechanism that is robust for being inserted and removed often, USB is a bit fragile there. And to make the actual drive more robust for transport. External USB drives are not good for bouncing around in an Iron Mountain truck.
