SAS controller for use with LTO-4 Tape drive?

mikee

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My work is looking for a LTO tape drive to backup their video footage and I found this

XW272 DELL LTO-4 EXTERNAL TAPE DRIVE

But it needs an SAS controller to connect to. I need some kind of controller card that is PCI, Not pci express to use with this drive. Unfortunatly my work only uses macs which can't have such a card added to them and the only other computer I found at work is an old acer P4 from around 2005 which only has PCI and agp. Can anyone help me out with this.

We haven't ordered the tape drive yet but we just want to make sure we have everything set before buying anything.
 
They would honestly be better of with raided disks considering the cost, unless they are wanting to archive this data for an incredibly long time... As far as a SAS PCI controller, you will not find one. There isn't enough bandwidth on PCI to support a basic SAS controller. Need a MINIMUM of a PCI-X (and that one is a long-shot as well) or PCI-e X1 slot.
 
PP, believe it or not, tapes are still standard for archival storage, some tapes hold upto 10TB, though they cost an arm and leg.

Why they NEED it, well, it seems kinda stupid to me, tape shouldn't be used for video backup, an HDD should be. Would honestly be cheaper to build a backup server/cluster.
 
My work is looking for a LTO tape drive to backup their video footage and I found this

XW272 DELL LTO-4 EXTERNAL TAPE DRIVE

But it needs an SAS controller to connect to. I need some kind of controller card that is PCI, Not pci express to use with this drive. Unfortunatly my work only uses macs which can't have such a card added to them and the only other computer I found at work is an old acer P4 from around 2005 which only has PCI and agp. Can anyone help me out with this.

We haven't ordered the tape drive yet but we just want to make sure we have everything set before buying anything.

Speak with your boss and supervisors and see if they will give the ok to give you 400 bucks to build a machine.

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This would be perfect for a small compact server machine.
Your only deal you'll need a case and you buy a os or let them supply it and get your pci-e controller for the tape drive.
 
it is for backing up video footage so we can erase our external hard drives and reuse them for more storage. We use macs at work which have limited space so for now we need a backup that is the same size as all the video storage we currently have and my boss seems to think that these tape drives will hold us over until 1tb blue ray discs come out. I don't think they will let me build a machine since we are only using these tapes until we can get 1tb bluerays so they won't need the computer after we do this one time backup. Originaly we were going to see if we could rent the tape equipment just to do the backup but the only place that rents that stuff we could find is in Scotland.

I will show my boss this thread on monday and see if he likes any of the options you guys come up with.
 
You guys will be waiting a mighty long time. 300GB professional discs aren't slated until a summer 2015 release. I can only imagine 1TB being way further.
 
You guys will be waiting a mighty long time. 300GB professional discs aren't slated until a summer 2015 release. I can only imagine 1TB being way further.

wow ok people where I work are assuming them this year.

Well just keep shooting me ideas and I will run them by my boss.
 
The cost of the tape system could net you several 4TB disks and you could store FAR more data that way if needed... Build a proper file-server with a good SAS controller in it. It's far better than tape backup, and way better than waiting for 1TB optical disks. Heck, finding 100GB Blu-Ray disks as is takes a LONG time, and they are VERY costly.

@Rockman, there is only one PCI-e X1 SAS controller on the market from what I can find, and it only supports Raid 1/0/10/1E, most of them are X8, and an X8 SAS controller wont work on that board it seems since the PCI-e X16 slot is shared with the video most likely. He need to look at an actual server board with x8 and secondary x16 slots that don't share with the video.

EDIT: Actually now that I think about it, a couple of cheap SATA disks on that board with even the x1 SAS controller for more disks would give very good data storage and redundancy. Couple of 2TB disks in R5, then on the SAS controller a four 4TB disks in two pairs of R1 would give ample storage and backup.
 
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@Rockman, there is only one PCI-e X1 SAS controller on the market from what I can find, and it only supports Raid 1/0/10/1E, most of them are X8, and an X8 SAS controller wont work on that board it seems since the PCI-e X16 slot is shared with the video most likely. He need to look at an actual server board with x8 and secondary x16 slots that don't share with the video.

This should do it right ?

ASRock E3C204 ATX Server Motherboard LGA 1155 Intel C204 DDR3 1600/1333/1066 - Newegg.com
Intel Pentium G2120 Ivy Bridge Dual-Core 3.1GHz LGA 1155 Desktop Processor BX80637G2120 - Newegg.com
 
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