WEBVTT 00:00:00.400 --> 00:00:05.000 Okay, so obviously our devious plan 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:07.200 to back up our entire petabyte server 00:00:07.200 --> 00:00:10.480 to Google Drive's cheap unlimited tier 00:00:10.480 --> 00:00:13.880 was going to hit a snag at some point. 00:00:13.880 --> 00:00:15.840 And from talking to Wendell over at Level One Text, 00:00:15.840 --> 00:00:19.680 that point seems to be at about 150 terabytes of storage 00:00:19.680 --> 00:00:21.600 when they start throttling you, 00:00:21.600 --> 00:00:22.840 like literally throttling you. 00:00:22.840 --> 00:00:25.000 So fine then, it's okay, 00:00:25.000 --> 00:00:28.720 because we had a backup plan anyway. 00:00:28.720 --> 00:00:30.640 Why store your data in the cloud 00:00:30.640 --> 00:00:43.950 when you can store it on tapes? 00:00:43.950 --> 00:00:50.920 So take off all your clothes. 00:00:50.920 --> 00:00:54.960 This is the MagStore TRB3-HL8, 00:00:54.960 --> 00:00:57.800 a Thunderbolt 3 equipped tape reader 00:00:57.800 --> 00:01:01.820 that even in 2018 costs about 10 times more 00:01:01.820 --> 00:01:05.240 than your mom or dad's hi-fi did back in the 1980s. 00:01:05.240 --> 00:01:10.240 Yes, my friends, this puppy will run you about $6,000 00:01:10.560 --> 00:01:12.200 for the single deck version 00:01:12.200 --> 00:01:12.940 or $9,000 for the single deck version. 00:01:12.960 --> 00:01:16.580 $9,000 for a dually. 00:01:16.580 --> 00:01:20.120 So how on earth does that make any sense? 00:01:20.120 --> 00:01:23.260 Let's start this story by backing up a little bit. 00:01:24.180 --> 00:01:25.580 Ah, I get it. 00:01:25.580 --> 00:01:27.540 So when I was growing up, 00:01:27.540 --> 00:01:32.260 the way to archive data long-term was using optical media. 00:01:32.260 --> 00:01:34.720 So the CD was high on its victory 00:01:34.720 --> 00:01:36.940 over the cassette in the music industry. 00:01:36.940 --> 00:01:39.180 I think I have a CD around here somewhere. 00:01:39.180 --> 00:01:43.700 Oh, yes, optical media, remember that? 00:01:44.660 --> 00:01:49.660 Anyway, CDs were slow and inconvenient to create, 00:01:49.980 --> 00:01:52.100 assuming that you could afford a CD burner at all, 00:01:52.100 --> 00:01:56.300 but their massive capacity meant that compared to floppy disks, 00:01:56.300 --> 00:02:00.340 oh, I have those too, check it out, 00:02:00.340 --> 00:02:03.460 compared to floppy disks and even zip disks, 00:02:03.460 --> 00:02:07.180 you could store what felt like an unlimited amount 00:02:07.180 --> 00:02:08.820 of at least certain types of files. 00:02:08.820 --> 00:02:12.320 Because remember that a 1.44 megabyte floppy, 00:02:12.320 --> 00:02:15.920 minus formatting overhead, could only store like a handful, 00:02:15.920 --> 00:02:19.080 of even basic things like homework assignments. 00:02:19.080 --> 00:02:20.920 Over time though, portable hard drives, 00:02:20.920 --> 00:02:22.480 which have come down in cost dramatically 00:02:22.480 --> 00:02:24.040 over the last decade or two, 00:02:24.040 --> 00:02:27.360 and cloud storage, which is undeniably more convenient 00:02:27.360 --> 00:02:29.180 for small backup jobs, 00:02:29.180 --> 00:02:32.800 have gradually displaced optical media. 00:02:32.800 --> 00:02:34.280 In spite of the booster shots 00:02:34.280 --> 00:02:36.220 that optical disks have gotten along the way, 00:02:36.220 --> 00:02:38.880 like rewritable capabilities, 00:02:38.880 --> 00:02:41.920 the capacity upgrades that DVD and Blu-ray brought, 00:02:41.920 --> 00:02:45.360 there's just a practical limit to how small you can make 00:02:45.360 --> 00:02:48.940 the little bumps on these plastic and foil Frisbees 00:02:48.940 --> 00:02:52.760 before the cost to make them just stops making sense. 00:02:52.760 --> 00:02:57.440 But that doesn't mean that the expensive drive, 00:02:57.440 --> 00:02:59.920 cheap media model is dead at all. 00:02:59.920 --> 00:03:03.960 In fact, all this time, quietly in the background, 00:03:03.960 --> 00:03:08.480 tape storage has been alive and well in the enterprise space 00:03:08.480 --> 00:03:10.660 with even modern supercomputers, 00:03:10.660 --> 00:03:14.180 like the SFU Cedar installation that we toured last year, 00:03:14.180 --> 00:03:15.060 being equipped with 00:03:15.360 --> 00:03:17.760 state-of-the-art tape libraries. 00:03:17.760 --> 00:03:20.300 This product is a little different though. 00:03:20.300 --> 00:03:22.340 So it's the same actual drive 00:03:22.340 --> 00:03:23.840 that you would find in a data center. 00:03:23.840 --> 00:03:26.000 They're actually all made by IBM these days 00:03:26.000 --> 00:03:27.140 and then rebadged. 00:03:27.140 --> 00:03:30.880 So it's LTO8, which means that each of your tapes 00:03:30.880 --> 00:03:34.980 is gonna have a total of 12 terabytes of storage. 00:03:34.980 --> 00:03:37.600 Now, there is this 30 terabytes on here, 00:03:37.600 --> 00:03:40.100 but that assumes that whatever data you're putting on it 00:03:40.100 --> 00:03:41.740 is highly compressible, 00:03:41.740 --> 00:03:44.060 so that would not apply to the kind of media 00:03:44.060 --> 00:03:45.320 that we would be backing up, in fact, 00:03:45.320 --> 00:03:46.420 for most things. 00:03:46.420 --> 00:03:47.380 Very few people use it. 00:03:47.380 --> 00:03:50.380 So 12 terabytes is really what you can count on. 00:03:50.380 --> 00:03:52.800 And then it also means, LTO8, 00:03:52.800 --> 00:03:56.340 that we are compatible with either these LTO8 tapes 00:03:56.340 --> 00:03:57.760 or LTO7. 00:03:57.760 --> 00:03:59.700 Normally, you would get two generations 00:03:59.700 --> 00:04:01.300 of backwards compatibility, 00:04:01.300 --> 00:04:04.200 but there was a materials change to barium ferrite 00:04:04.200 --> 00:04:07.910 that made that impractical this time around. 00:04:07.910 --> 00:04:12.760 All right, so why did they put all this work 00:04:12.760 --> 00:04:15.420 into creating a Thunderbolt 3 enclosure, 00:04:15.580 --> 00:04:18.700 for a tape drive? 00:04:18.700 --> 00:04:21.560 Well, for people like me, 00:04:21.560 --> 00:04:25.430 who have hundreds of terabytes of data, 00:04:25.430 --> 00:04:29.470 but who don't necessarily need lightning-fast access to it. 00:04:29.470 --> 00:04:33.680 So what we're gonna do is give it a try. 00:04:33.680 --> 00:04:34.960 Now, when I first set this up, 00:04:34.960 --> 00:04:37.540 I actually did it on a Windows machine, 00:04:37.540 --> 00:04:41.620 but quite frankly, I wouldn't really recommend that. 00:04:41.620 --> 00:04:43.840 It's not a fantastic experience. 00:04:43.840 --> 00:04:46.440 There's this whole annoying rigmarole to get the drivers, 00:04:46.440 --> 00:04:49.360 installed, you have to disable driver signature enforcement, 00:04:49.360 --> 00:04:51.300 you gotta make some changes in the BIOS. 00:04:51.300 --> 00:04:55.340 It's a real hassle, but once you do get it working, 00:04:55.340 --> 00:04:57.620 assuming that you can find an app that cooperates, 00:04:57.620 --> 00:05:00.540 there are some driver issues on Windows as well, 00:05:00.540 --> 00:05:03.560 it is a lot more painless than it used to be. 00:05:03.560 --> 00:05:06.420 Now, in the old days with tape drives, 00:05:06.420 --> 00:05:08.180 you used to have to take all the files 00:05:08.180 --> 00:05:09.760 that you wanted to archive, 00:05:09.760 --> 00:05:12.680 wrap them up into another type of file 00:05:12.680 --> 00:05:15.820 called a .tar file or a tar ball. 00:05:15.820 --> 00:05:17.800 And then if you wanted to pull anything off of it, 00:05:17.800 --> 00:05:19.040 you had to pull the whole thing off 00:05:19.040 --> 00:05:22.060 and then you could pick out the one file that you needed. 00:05:22.060 --> 00:05:24.380 Now, it's basically drag and drop. 00:05:24.380 --> 00:05:28.390 So whether you're using Finder or Windows Explorer, 00:05:28.390 --> 00:05:31.090 it's a much more seamless experience. 00:05:31.090 --> 00:05:33.510 Let's go ahead and load this puppy in. 00:05:33.510 --> 00:05:39.110 Sound delightfully retro. 00:05:39.110 --> 00:05:40.350 That was so cool. 00:05:40.350 --> 00:05:44.040 Listen to it go. 00:05:44.040 --> 00:05:47.960 So it takes like 30 seconds or so to initialize, 00:05:47.960 --> 00:05:51.460 but we're just gonna enjoy those sounds together. 00:05:51.480 --> 00:05:59.620 So the thing about tape 00:05:59.620 --> 00:06:04.400 is that it has to be read from and written to linearly. 00:06:04.400 --> 00:06:07.480 There's no read-write head that can jump around on the media 00:06:07.480 --> 00:06:09.760 and obviously, unlike solid state storage, 00:06:09.760 --> 00:06:13.300 it can't just grab an address and pull the data directly. 00:06:13.300 --> 00:06:17.880 So you're gonna hear a lot of it reeling and un-reeling tape 00:06:17.880 --> 00:06:19.720 whenever you use the thing. 00:06:19.720 --> 00:06:22.400 So this is a piece of software called MyLTO. 00:06:22.400 --> 00:06:25.140 They have a more advanced version called Pre-Roll Post 00:06:25.140 --> 00:06:27.200 that has a bunch of database features, 00:06:27.200 --> 00:06:29.200 but basically what this is, 00:06:29.200 --> 00:06:31.740 you don't, strictly speaking, need it, 00:06:31.740 --> 00:06:33.460 but what it is is it's a piece of software 00:06:33.460 --> 00:06:36.740 for helping you keep all of your backups organized. 00:06:36.740 --> 00:06:38.780 So in the event that you wanna go back and pull 00:06:38.780 --> 00:06:41.680 like an old news story or something to refer back to it, 00:06:41.680 --> 00:06:44.320 you know exactly where to go, which labeled tape to pull, 00:06:44.320 --> 00:06:47.900 and where exactly in the folder structure you would find 00:06:47.900 --> 00:06:50.040 the files that you're looking for. 00:06:50.040 --> 00:06:51.320 It's gonna take a couple minutes here 00:06:51.320 --> 00:06:53.200 to figure out exactly how much data 00:06:53.200 --> 00:06:55.640 is in this folder on our NAS on the Vault. 00:06:55.640 --> 00:06:56.480 So this is pulling off a petabyte project. 00:06:56.480 --> 00:06:56.500 So this is pulling off a petabyte project. 00:06:56.500 --> 00:06:57.080 So this is pulling off a petabyte project. 00:06:57.080 --> 00:06:57.180 So this is pulling off a petabyte project. 00:06:57.180 --> 00:06:58.540 So this is pulling off a petabyte project. 00:06:58.540 --> 00:07:00.020 So that took about 20 minutes, 00:07:00.020 --> 00:07:02.720 but the bottleneck here is just our network connection 00:07:02.720 --> 00:07:03.560 to the Vault. 00:07:03.560 --> 00:07:19.060 So now we can go ahead and begin. 00:07:19.060 --> 00:07:21.240 So as you get to breaks in files, 00:07:21.240 --> 00:07:22.960 you're gonna hear it kind of rev down, 00:07:22.960 --> 00:07:25.660 but in general, we're able to do anywhere 00:07:25.660 --> 00:07:30.660 from about 150 to 200 and small change megabytes per second. 00:07:30.660 --> 00:07:32.780 from about 150 to 200 and small change megabytes per second. 00:07:32.780 --> 00:07:34.240 And that's over the network. 00:07:34.240 --> 00:07:37.400 You can actually do as much as 300 megabytes per second 00:07:37.400 --> 00:07:38.360 under ideal conditions. 00:07:38.360 --> 00:07:42.080 So if you like me were thinking initially when you saw this, 00:07:42.080 --> 00:07:44.820 well, Thunderbolt 3, 40 gigabit per second, 00:07:44.820 --> 00:07:47.280 like is that kind of an overkill interface for this? 00:07:47.280 --> 00:07:52.690 The answer is actually not as much as you might think. 00:07:52.690 --> 00:07:57.470 So there's still about 15 hours left 00:07:57.470 --> 00:08:01.070 in order to copy about four terabytes of data. 00:08:01.070 --> 00:08:03.870 And I believe it typically quotes this 00:08:03.870 --> 00:08:05.610 in terms of copy time. 00:08:05.610 --> 00:08:07.790 There's also a verification process 00:08:07.790 --> 00:08:08.630 that it has to go through 00:08:08.630 --> 00:08:10.890 that takes almost as long as the initial copy. 00:08:10.890 --> 00:08:13.180 So to be clear, 00:08:13.180 --> 00:08:16.520 it's not like you're gonna be editing video 00:08:16.520 --> 00:08:18.480 off something like this or anything like that. 00:08:18.480 --> 00:08:20.000 Like if you have to grab one file 00:08:20.000 --> 00:08:21.480 that's on one end of the tape 00:08:21.480 --> 00:08:23.160 and then one file that's on the other one, 00:08:23.160 --> 00:08:25.100 the whole thing has to spool through. 00:08:25.100 --> 00:08:28.350 Like it's crazy slow. 00:08:28.350 --> 00:08:31.330 But while there is still a purpose 00:08:31.330 --> 00:08:33.930 to having quick access to a lot of our footage, 00:08:33.930 --> 00:08:36.010 so it's not like the vault is going anywhere. 00:08:36.010 --> 00:08:38.070 So over Thunderbolt with a 10 gigabit network, 00:08:38.070 --> 00:08:38.950 So over Thunderbolt with a 10 gigabit network, 00:08:38.950 --> 00:08:42.850 we can easily back up an entire tape 00:08:42.850 --> 00:08:44.610 over the course of a day. 00:08:44.610 --> 00:08:48.010 And the costs compared to hard drives in Storinators 00:08:48.010 --> 00:08:50.470 start to make a lot of sense 00:08:50.470 --> 00:08:55.470 once you get over about the 100 to 200 terabyte range. 00:08:55.890 --> 00:08:57.830 Add to that that these things are rated 00:08:57.830 --> 00:09:01.030 at a 30 year shelf life, 00:09:01.030 --> 00:09:03.290 compare that to hard drives whose lubrication 00:09:03.290 --> 00:09:06.810 will kind of wear out and seep away, 00:09:06.810 --> 00:09:08.950 causing them to die over time. 00:09:08.950 --> 00:09:13.850 And tape might just be the way forward for us. 00:09:13.850 --> 00:09:14.770 So thanks for watching guys. 00:09:14.770 --> 00:09:17.070 If you disliked this video, you can hit that button. 00:09:17.070 --> 00:09:20.540 But who couldn't like that sound? 00:09:20.540 --> 00:09:22.520 But if you liked it, hit like, get subscribed, 00:09:22.520 --> 00:09:23.660 or maybe consider checking out 00:09:23.660 --> 00:09:24.980 where to buy the stuff we featured 00:09:24.980 --> 00:09:26.640 at the link in the video description. 00:09:26.640 --> 00:09:27.920 Also down there is our merch store, 00:09:27.920 --> 00:09:29.220 which has cool shirts like this one 00:09:29.220 --> 00:09:32.120 and our community forum, which you should definitely join.