Bob, you're right that LTO isn't for everyone. You're also right that ten years from now, restoring an LTO4 is going to seem out of date compared to what's available even at the local electronics store. Things change quickly and I think you'd agree with me that people shouldn't invest in equipment that will not make them money.
While LTO isn't for everyone, there are some instances where it's required and makes a lot of sense. If I'm a "big shot" because some of our clients require LTO archiving, or because I like the idea more than hard drive only archiving, then great. It's part of the cost of doing business. When it really matters, redundancy and quality of archiving is really what's important.
I will say that I think that the cost of the Cache-A units are high. But when we started looking at other solutions, the Pro-Cache made quite a bit of sense for our situation. There are other LTO options out there, but many of them require proprietary software to be read. Cache-A units use industry standard TAR to ensure that compatibility is maximized. The Cache-A units also don't require a Linux geek to operate. It's really just plug and play (as much as plug and play LTO will ever be). When comparing the real costs of some other systems, I felt like the Cache-A units made sense for us.
While the Cache-A units might seem expensive, it's really just a fraction of the cost of what we used to spend on decks for making masters in the past. Buying a $30,000 HDCAM deck or a $100,000 HDCAM SR seems laughable for archiving when keeping a ProRes file is superior in so many ways now days. $8000 to expand and archiving system seems reasonable compared to those options.
Here's a little math just for kicks too.
If I had 50TB of material that needed a redundant backup, here are some cost comparisons. If I bought 100TB of hard drives (using 1TB drives at $80 each), that would cost $8000. If I bought 100TB of LTO4 tapes (using 800GB LTO4 at $35/tape), that would cost $3500. If you add in the cost of a Cache-A unit, then making LTO4 tapes is only $3500 more than using hard drives. I'm not sure cost is really that big of an issue anymore. Nor do I really feel like a "big shot" for spending $3500 more to archive to tape instead of hard drives.
-Russ
Russell Lasson
Colorist/Digital Cinema Specialist
Color Mill
Salt Lake City, UT
http://www.colormill.net
