Hitachi UnVeils 100GB-200GB Blu-Ray Disc

[Poke]

Hitachi unveils 100GB, 200GB Blu-ray discs - Gadgets news - QJ.NET

What you see in the image above is a Blu-ray disc, but that's no ordinary Blu-ray disc for you. It's Hitachi's four-layer 100GB Blu-ray put on display at its CEATEC exhibit recently. If you thought the old 50GB Blu-ray packed some serious storage power, this one doubles it. The only thing scarier? You got it: An eight-layer Blu-ray disc which can pack in a whopping 200GB of solid data.

With that kind of storage, entire hard drives could easily be backed up with a single disc, though current writing speeds make the process a pretty tedious one. We're hoping to see more hardware support for today's leading next-generation format.

 

[John Kotches]

We've been discussing backups in general.

This would only be a theortically possible solution for the small business. Everybody else has far too much data to back up. This would require too many drives; too many discs and too much time.

It would stretch beyond what I refer to as "Our Lady of Perpetual backup". In other words the backup cycle would go beyond 24 hours. Not acceptable

For small businesses it might work if they get the write speeds up.

Keep in mind other solutions (here I'm thinking of LTO3/LTO4) are dramatically faster with greater capacity.

Best,

 

[navychop]

Costs are a concern. R/W discs would be highly desirable for this. Yes, writing speeds have always increased in previous formats, why not now? And some of us have been burned by tape in the past and have little faith in tapes.

100GB would more than meet my needs today. 200GB would meet the needs for many years in the future. My tape today takes 4.5 hours, with verification. I could go up to 12 hours if need be, for an overnight backup. And the vast majority of businesses in this country are small businesses. There is a large market for this- IF, as you point out, they can bring it in at acceptable cost and speed.

From the SBA:
Small firms:
• Represent 99.7 percent of all employer firms.
• Employ about half of all private sector employees.

 

[John Kotches]

Costs are a concern. R/W discs would be highly desirable for this. Yes, writing speeds have always increased in previous formats, why not now? And some of us have been burned by tape in the past and have little faith in tapes.

Every media fails. Optical is just as prone to failure as tape is.

I've been burned by every possible backup media except direct disk copying.

100GB would more than meet my needs today. 200GB would meet the needs for many years in the future.

Data is growing exponentially. Backup devices are growing geometrically. See the disconnect there?

My tape today takes 4.5 hours, with verification. I could go up to 12 hours if need be, for an overnight backup.

What do you do when the backup fails? Pray for no failures? Your window needs to be half the time to allow for a successful rerun without impacting the business.

And the vast majority of businesses in this country are small businesses. There is a large market for this- IF, as you point out, they can bring it in at acceptable cost and speed.

And the vast majority of them aren't backing up anything. Stupid, but true.

Then again a lot of people think RAID-5 == no backups necessary.


From the SBA:
Small firms:
• Represent 99.7 percent of all employer firms.[/quote]

Small firms not always == small data sets to backup.

• Employ about half of all private sector employees.

There can only be so many medium / large businesses employing people before they run out of people to employ.

Cheers,

 

[John Kotches]

Some pricing information:

LT04 tape drive ~4K
Media ~$110 / 800GB native / 1.6TB compressed

Blu-ray drive ~500
Media: ~$45 / 50 GB native / Unknown with software compression
Media to equal tape capacity: $720

At ~6.5x the current cost for Blu-ray 50GB RW media it needs to get much cheaper just to approach equity in the cost arena.

For backup rates:
LTO-4: 240MB/second maximum; 160 MB Real world sustained.

For Blu-ray to reach speed parity of one drive you need a 25x write speed. DVD burners have been around for a number of years now and they still haven't hit 25x speed. Today, that's 12 drives. And by that time; tape will have increased in speed again by at least 2 more generations.

It also becomes very difficult to spin that relatively light platter at the revs required.

The real backup is more disk. Tape is becoming strictly archival.

Cheers,

 

[vurbano]

Too expensive, too slow, too small and too late. By the time they get 25x write speeds we will all be dead and other backup mediums even bigger, faster and cheaper than they are now.

 

[navychop]

But if you're only backing up 50-100GB, one Blu-ray disc will suffice, assuming the Hitachi makes it to market. So the cost comparison is one disc to one tape. And so long as it finishes overnight, that's all I need. Same for many businesses.

 

[John Kotches]

But if you're only backing up 50-100GB, one Blu-ray disc will suffice, assuming the Hitachi makes it to market. So the cost comparison is one disc to one tape. And so long as it finishes overnight, that's all I need. Same for many businesses.

When you start thinking about the data as your enterprise; regardless of the size of the data (or company) you'll stop being a small business from a data standpoint.

50-100GB? That's fine for daily incrementals. Now show me how long and how many discs it's going to take your weekly full backups. Who's going to sit around to change all the discs?

You are going to be be doing weekly full backups, right?

 

[diogen]

50-100GB? That's fine for daily incrementals.

50GB daily incrementals?
Holy smokes! What kind of small business is that?
I thought this are the daily incrementals that companies like Visa do...

Diogen.

 

[charper1]

Here at Nike we do nightly's and we KILL that 50GB figure. We currently use tape for speed, and likely cost for now; we use the TS1120 drives along with the 500GB/700GB tapes; I am not sure if we maintain 30 or 60 days worth; but at least 30 days.

 

[mike123abc]

We always do full backups. 5 companies accounting and sales databases... 15GB. Just too big for DVD. We could easily use single layer BD. We used to use exabyte tapes but they only went to 7GB. So now we use USB disks.

 

[navychop]

I do a full backup each night, even though we have a RAID. Separate tape for each day of the week, plus "specials" and annual. 70+ GB on a DLT 80GB/160GB. We're quite happy with our VS160. When we replace our server in 2009 or 2010, we might go with LTO, but that's a pricey option. To get significantly more than our current capacity, we'd likely have to spend thousands. Maybe those costs will come down.

But a Blu-ray 100GB burner using rewritable discs has a strong appeal, from a costs point of view. We'll just have to see if they'll be available.

Of course, the company could be twice the size by then- or half. No point in getting wedded to any option at this point. But my point is- it looks like a Blu-ray back up system will be a contender for this purpose. Overnight backups on a single media at reasonable cost. For us, not some large firm. LTO4 doesn't meet that.

 

[John Kotches]

50GB daily incrementals?
Holy smokes! What kind of small business is that?
I thought this are the daily incrementals that companies like Visa do...

Diogen.

No it isn't. There's are far bigger than that.

Desktop daily incrementals might make it in 100GB; but they have lots of desktops so I have my doubts.

Also; e-mail dailies pile up storage quickly.

Cheers,

 

[John Kotches]

I do a full backup each night, even though we have a RAID. Separate tape for each day of the week, plus "specials" and annual. 70+ GB on a DLT 80GB/160GB. We're quite happy with our VS160. When we replace our server in 2009 or 2010, we might go with LTO, but that's a pricey option. To get significantly more than our current capacity, we'd likely have to spend thousands. Maybe those costs will come down.

How costly is losing the data and having to manually reconstruct it? How long can the business afford to be down in the event of a massive failure?

A few thousands against this cost is very cheap.

But a Blu-ray 100GB burner using rewritable discs has a strong appeal, from a costs point of view. We'll just have to see if they'll be available.

By the time you add up comparable costs; I'd be surprised if they weren't comparable. Certainly an LTO3 drive would be fairly cheap by then.

Of course, the company could be twice the size by then- or half. No point in getting wedded to any option at this point. But my point is- it looks like a Blu-ray back up system will be a contender for this purpose. Overnight backups on a single media at reasonable cost. For us, not some large firm. LTO4 doesn't meet that.

I like that a Blu-ray system that isn't proven in the field as a viable solution at 50GB is a contender for a yet to be a product 100 GB solution which will ship at some unspecificed date in the future with unknown costs for media or the drives.