The cheapest, most reliable way to archive your data just got easier.

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CHEAPER AND LONGER LASTING

You’ll pay $53 per TB with hard drives, for a shelf life of 10 years.

You’ll pay $25 per TB with LTO tapes, for a shelf life of 30 years.

Over the course of 100TB you’re paying $5,300 versus $2,500, a 54.5% cost reduction, while keeping the data fresh for 3x longer.

WE MAKE IT EASY

We guarantee that right now, you have a collection of old hard drives in a box somewhere with old projects, some of which haven’t been spun up for at least 4-5 years. You’re probably never going to open the projects again, but you also don’t want to lose them. You’ve been meaning to migrate them all to a safe and secure backup, but cloud storage is too expensive for how important the data is, and you don’t want to waste thousands of dollars on new hard drives. This is where LTO comes in—the industry standard for data archival across the film industry and data centers.

THE DREADFUL 3-2-1 RULE

We’ve all heard about it but shove it to the back parts of our mind with a ‘she’ll be right’ mentality. With drive thru, we’re trying to make it easier and cheaper to achieve the 3-2-1 rule, which has you maintaining 3 copies of your data, across 2 different types of media, with 1 of them in an off-site location.

WHAT IS COLD STORAGE AND WHY SHOULD I CARE?

As a production company ourselves, we have been in your boat - old hard drives that you know you probably won’t use but the thought of losing the data doesn’t quite sit right. A client might ask for something 10 years down the line or you might need to dig up the old data at some point in your life. Hard drives that sit without use tend to last around 10 years before they risk not spinning up or the data becoming unreadable.

STEP 1

REQUEST AN ARCHIVE/RECOVERY

Order an archive/recovery in increments of 12TB (12000GB) on the order page above. You’ll need to provide us with a bit of information about how you want us to structure your archive, including how you want it named and organized, whether you want spanning across your tapes, and how you’re getting your data to us. More info on these can be found in the FAQ’s, but don’t hesitate to reach out to us if you have any further questions.

STEP 2

SEND US YOUR DATA

We accept a wide range of delivery methods, including shipping, drop-off/pick-ups and cloud delivery, across a wide a range of media, including external/internal hard drives, SSD’s, NAS/DAS and more. Please do not send us the only copy of your data - if you only have one copy there is an option to collect a temporary drive from us to transfer your data. There will be a cost to this as well as a security deposit.

STEP 3

WE CREATE YOUR DRIVE

We’ll create your tapes based on the info you’ve provided us, verify them using xxHash checksum, label and let you know that they are ready to collect or ship. We will also provide you with the verification confirmation and tape index so you can see what data is on what tape, as well as an index of the drives you sent to us.

FAQs

  • Linear Tape Open (LTO) is a magnetic tape data storage designed for backup and data archiving. LTO is the industry standard for film and production studios to backup and archive projects into long-term storage.

  • LTO hardware and software is expensive and complex to setup - the goal of drive thru is to provide a service that allows small to medium sized businesses an option to backup their data onto tape without incurring the upfront cost of the drives, networking and software.

  • LTO tape is 10,000 times more reliable than hard disks, and 1000 times more reliable than SSD technology. To put it another way the odds of getting an uncorrectable error using LTO media is one in 10 quintillion.

    There's a reason why it is the industry standard for movie studios and data centres.

  • We take all steps to ensure is kept private and secure - it is not looked through by human eyes, and is only contained locally on our ingest station for the duration of the backup, after which is deleted.

  • All data will be transferred across to our ingest station and a file structure will be built before writing to the tapes, so don't worry if you have a bunch of mixed media lying around or data spread across multiple smaller sized drives.

    If your data type isn't listed, just flick us an email!

    We accept the following media:

    • External hard drives (don't worry if you have a box of these!)

    • SSD's

    • Internal hard drives (2.5 & 3.5 inch)

    • NAS/DAS (QNAP, Synology etc)

    • Flash drives, DVD's etc

    • Cloud links

  • We use Fujifilm LTO Ultrium 8 12TB data cartridge's, and use LTO-8 Quantum tape drives, in a custom server rack build.

    Data is copied using a verification software to our ingest station which runs as a ZFS raid with daily scrubbing, examining all data in the pools to verify that it checksums correctly.

    The data is then copied to the tape, and verified again once the copy has completed.

  • Please refrain from sending us the only copy of your data. While we take measures to ensure the safety of your data there are always risks when there is only one copy. If you only have one copy there is an option to collect a temporary drive from us to transfer your data. There will be a cost to this as well as a security deposit.

  • When ordering, you have the option of selecting full-copy or spanning. With spanning, the drive will copy data to the full capacity of the drive, and stop at a certain point during the transfer, asking for a new tape. This means that 2 tapes will be required to recover the data either side of the spanning point.

    With full-copy, we will only transfer data to the tape if a full project/folder in the root directory can be copied to the single tape. This can leave gaps of empty space on the tape but it guarantees entire projects will remain on a single tape.

    If you have any further questions about this don't hesitate to get in touch directly.

  • As we run a verification on the tape after it's copy, a single 12TB tape takes around 24 hours of continuous transferring from our ingest station to the tape, in additional to how busy we are at the time.

  • As you cannot plug the tape into a computer to see the data on the tape, we will provide you with a tape index so you can see what data is on what tape when we copy to it, as well as an index of the drives you sent to us.

  • Your tapes can be recovered using any LTO-8 or LTO-9 drive reader. We also provide a recovery service - just send it back/drop it off and we will transfer it back onto hard drives or cloud storage of your choosing.

  • Tapes are relatively easy to care for - once the tapes leave our possession they will become your responsibility to look after - this is how we maintain cheaper costs than data centers.

    • Tapes should be stored between 16-25 degrees.

    • Protect cartridges from shock, vibration, moisture, and magnetic fields.

    • Keep cartridges in protective cases and store vertically when not in use (provided with every tape).

    • Keep cartridges in protective cases and store vertically when not in use.

    • Never touch the tape or tape leader. Dust and oils from skin can contaminate the tape, and affect performance

    • If you drop your tape, inspect the cartridge for damage and get back in touch with us for an assessment. Dropped tapes should always be transferred to a new one.

    If you want further information you can check our Quantum's care guide here: https://www.quantum.com/globalassets/products/tape-storage-new/quantum-media_care_guide.pdf

Got a question that’s not in the FAQ’s?