• General Questions
• Technical Questions
• Technical Support Issues
• Compatibility Questions

1. What is the "shelf life" of an HR backup as compared to tape?
2. Aren't tapes tougher? Can't they withstand dropping and rough handling more readily than hard drive?
3. Aren't tapes cheaper than hard drives per megabyte?
4. If tape is so terrible, why do so many people use it to back up their data?

Q: What is the "shelf life" of an High Rely Hard Drive Backup as compared to tape?
A: Many tape vendors claim tape has a shelf life anywhere from 10 to 30 years. With over 20 years of real-world experience, we have not found this to be the case. We have been unable to find reliable statistics on shelf-life for data stored on tapes or hard drive backups, yet we believe the data stored on a High Rely drive will last at least as long, and probably longer than data stored on any type of tape.

This can be said because hard drives are hermetically sealed and have rigid surfaces with very even distribution of magnetic material. Tape drives have a surface that is flexible, uses very cheap plastic substrate, becomes brittle in sunlight, and is openly exposed to the atmosphere. Even if the electronics failed for some reason, data recovery companies often pull data directly from hard drive platters.

Hard drive data life is usually quoted at 3 to 7 years. We have experience with many drives that last longer than that.

Q: Aren't tapes tougher? Can't they withstand dropping and rough handling more readily than hard drive?
A: Tape vendors would certainly like you to think so. We don't advise you to drop your High Rely Hard Drive Backup drives, but for testing purposes we've dropped High Rely media plenty of times and still had functional drives with data. For the videos check out: Hard Drive Fragility Debunked. Highly Reliable Systems always recommends carrying your High Rely media in the padded carrying case to avoid shock and static.

Q: Aren't tape backups cheaper than hard drive backups per megabyte?
A: It depends on the tape technology and market forces. During the Thailand flooding of late 2011 hard drive prices went up, which changed the dynamic a little.

Our experience has been the average backup tape lasts for no more than 50 uses (one use per week for 1 year). Compare that with hard drive backup. Hard drives last hundreds of thousands of uses (at least 3 years). High Rely media is actually cheaper than tape. When you factor in the 3 times longer life span (and that's being conservative) the numbers change dramatically. At a snapshot towards the end of 2011 LTO 1.5TB tapes were $55 and a 1.5TB hard drive was $139 (previously around $60 prior to flooding). If you assume tapes last 1 year and drives last 3 years you get

1.5 TB LTO tape		$.037/GB/YR
1.5 TB HDD		$0.31/GB/YR

Consider the technology of a High Rely Hard Drive Backup: the electronics of the hard drive, the removable drive tray, the sata to USB3 conversion (if needed), the temperature sensor, the locking mechanism and the LCD display. You realize a High Rely hard drive backup system is a better financial investment.

Q: If tape is so terrible, why do so many people use it to back up their data?
A: It really just comes down to people not realizing that there is an alternative. At one time, it was unreasonably expensive to use anything else. Hard drives were also much more delicate and slow compared to sequential media. This article explains "6 reasons our systems beat tape"

Technical Questions

1. How do your multi-bay systems connect to my server?
2. Which is better eSATA or USB3
3. Why do you require me to insert a key to unlock the media before I remove it?
4. Do I have to click the "Safely remove hardware" icon before turning the High-Rely key and removing the media?
5. Can I change out the hard drive in my High-Rely classic tray to a bigger one?
6. What is the largest media size I can use?
7. Can I remove the SATA drive inside the HR media tray and install it on a standard SATA controller?
8. What speed related issues should I be aware of?
9. Is eSATA signaling different than normal internal SATA?

Q: How do your multi-bay systems connect to my server?
A: The back of our DAS (Direct Attached Storage) systems have eSATA, USB3, or both. Our NAS (Network Attached Storage) systems are typcially Gigabit Ethernet.

Q: Which is better eSATA or USB3 ?
A: Both interfaces are faster than a typical 7200 RPM hard drive so it comes down mostly to compatibility. eSATA data rate is 3Gpbs and USB3 is 4.8Gbps but since USB3 requires a "bridge chip" to convert to native SATA anyway you actually see a small performance decrease on some USB3 connected systems (less than 5%). Some systems have difficulty with eSATA controller compatibility and for those we recommend trying USB3. For USB3 multibay models like the 5, 7, or 10 bay JBOD High-Rely classic family be aware that when swapping drives all drives go offline momentarily as a bus reset is done. This usually is not a problem unless multiple backups are underway when a media swap is done. the eSATA model doesn't typically have this.

Q: Why do you require me to insert a key to unlock the media before I remove it?
A: The locking media is designed to prevent accidental removal of the media, which can result in data corruption. It also provides some measure of physical security. To have the key permanently handy, attach it to the case itself.

Q: Do I have to click the "Safely remove hardware" icon before turning the High-Rely key and removing the media?
A: It is always an extra safety precaution to notify the operating system on your server that you'll be removing a drive. Newer operating systems (Windows 2003/2008, Vista, Windows 7) have improved on drive removablity and it has become less necessary to safely remove drives but many IT professionals still do. You also might want to check Drive caching to insure the operating system sees the drives as removable. For example in XP and 2003 In Device Manager, under properties for each Removable Hard Drive, select "Optimize for fast removal". With this option selected, it is less necessary to click "Safely Remove Hardware.". Having said all this, iIf Windows was still writing to the drives when you power them down, it can result in data loss and corrupted hard drives so it's a good idea if your operation allow for it to notify the operating system you are removing the drive before operating the key. The HRDM2 software may help make this a one click operation.

Q: Can I change out the hard drive in my High-Rely classic tray to a bigger one?
A: Yes usually. Most drives we tested are compatible and in this product line all the drives are SATA. When you buy the media directly from High Rely you may get better warranty support.

Q: What is the largest media size I can use?
A: 3TB is the largest hard drive size that has been tested in High-Rely classic Media. 1TB drives in MPac media (2 per cartridge for 2TB total), 3TB in RAIDPac Media (total 9TB with 3 drives in RAID0 mode) . We have also tested 4TB 3.5" in both High-Rely Classic and RAIDPacs and expect to ship these when they become commercially available.

Q: Can I remove the SATA drive inside the HR media tray and install it on a standard SATA controller?
A: Yes. The drive format of the High Rely classic hard drive (NTFS)is identical to that of a SATA. It should work with no additional partitioning or formatting. Obviously MPac and RAIDPac hard drives must be kept together with the RAID controller to be accessed, but you can use USB or SATA ports on back to access them in an emergency even without the RAIDFrame enclosure.

Q: What speed related issues should I be aware of?
A: Here is a generic list of a few speed related issues you may find with hard drive backups:

• Slower USB ports - If the HR subsystem is inadvertently using slower USB (1.0, 1.2, or 2.0) versus USB3.0 , it will make a huge difference in performance.
• Anti-virus or Spyware scanners - Often people are running real time anti-virus or spyware scanners. These dramatically slow down performance because each read is run through the AV I/O sub-system. The same is true for *any* piece of software that hooks into the I/O. This can include image utilities like Acronis or Storagecraft if multiple different programs are installed. Try temporarily disabling any AV or anti-spyware software and testing the speed that way.
• Backing up over the ethernet - DAS is generally faster than NAS (Network Attached Storage). We sell both, and each has it's place. For maximum speed use DAS over eSATA or USB3. Backup speeds taking data off remote servers over the 100MB Ethernet network will be slower than Gigabit Ethernet.
• File size and depth structure- plays in heavily to performance. Larger files and fewer deep directories will be much faster to backup than lots of smaller files with complicated directory structure. It's hard to do much about this but if there are lots of small files that could be the problem. Imaging software that reads at the block level may be better for lots of small files (Acronis, BESR, StorageCraft, Windows native backup).
• Cluster size and drive fragmentation - can dramatically affect read performance. Try defragging (preferably with a 3rd party defragger) the source drive and read http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_optimization.htm for more tips. If the HR drive has been heavily used, and/or already contains existing data, you may achieve some advantage by defragging it as well as your source drive, but it may not be necessary if your backups delete or overwrite the drives (full backups).
• Backup software - Our speed tests were generally performed with imaging products like StorageCraft's Shadowprotect. Filebackup is usually slower than block level imaging.
• Compression - If compression is turned on, either on the source NTFS disk, on the destination disk, or in real time while using the backup software, it can slow down backups. Oddly sometimes it speeds it up if compression is done before the data is transferred to the disk because with fast processors that compress quickly, less data is moved to the destination drive.
• Full vs. Incremental Backup - Incremental backups move less data and can be more efficient.
• Verify Options - Any option to verify the backup during performance testing doubles the backup time and should NOT be counted in the benchmark.
• Backup Agents - Some backup "agents" such as Exchange, open file, or SQL agents, may backup much more slowly than native file backup.
• Multitasked CPU - If the CPU is heavily loaded, doing any other type of task, that will obviously affect backup performance. For example, if a server were being heavily used for database access, running spyware, or doing computations during the time of the backup, then fewer CPU cycles would be available to the backup process. Do a CTRL-ALT-DEL, and on the processes tab, arrange processes by "CPU" to see if there is a process taking an inordinate amount of CPU during the backup. Remember spyware can kill performance!
• Low RAM - Systems with very low amounts of available RAM will use the pagefile excessively, dramatically slowing performance.
• Errors on Disk - Errors on the source or destination hard drives will slow performance.
• RAID Arrays - Often servers are running RAID arrays, or software mirrored drives, whose read performance is lower than a stand alone drive would be (In theory it should be faster to read from multiple drives but we've seen several examples where RAID performance is a problem). Upgrades to RAID controllers can sometimes be done by adding RAM or processor power. Run our programs called "Fakeback" and TRMark to determine if your source drives are running slowly.

Q: Is eSATA signaling different than normal internal SATA?
A: Well sort of. The same signals and number of wires are used, but with iSATA, the transmission voltage from the host may range from 400 to 600 millivolts. The receiver must be able to decode voltages between 325 and 600mV. With the longer 2 meter eSATA cables, in order to account for additional losses, the minimum voltage transmitted is raised from 400mV to 500mV, and receiver sensitivity is decreased to 240mv. These changes accommodate any additional degradation with the longer cables and additional connectors in the signal path.

Technical Support Issues

Q: I don't like the drive letter(s) my High-Rely hard drive backup system was given by the operating system.
A: 1) Right click "My Computer" and select "Manage" 2) Choose "Disk Management" 3) Right click the volume associated with your High-Rely 4) Choose "Change Drive Letters and paths". You will receive a warning that changing drive letters may affect programs, but you can generally ignore this message when re-assigning drive letters for your High-Rely drives. You can also use HRDM2 to reassign drive letters. Note: All High Rely hard drive backup units are shipped with our High Rely Drive Manager 2 that will "nail down" a particular volume to a drive letter, regardless of what Windows wants to do. This eliminates drive letter "swimming" issues.

Once the drive letter is assigned, it should stay the same in that system. If you move your High-Rely drive stack to another Windows machine, the drive letters will most likely need to be re-assigned. This is because Windows keeps drive letters for "basic" disks in the registry of each machine.

Q: There is some type of alarm noise coming from my high-rely classic drive.
A: Each drive is equipped with a fan, a temperature alarm, and a temperature display. If the temperature of the hard drive backup exceeds the preset factory threshold (130*F), or if the fan stops turning, the alarm will sound.

Q: How do I make the alarm stop?
A: Push any button to stop the alarm.

Q: How do I set the alarm threshold to a higher temperature?
A: Push the Set button twice to move past the Celsius/Fahrenheit option, then use the up and down buttons to select the alarm threshold. Finally, hold down the Set button for at least 2 seconds or until you hear a double beep.

Q: What is a "normal" drive temperature?
A: This varies depending on the case, air flow, and the type of drives installed. Normal office environments see temperatures from about 75* to 99*F in the 5 or 7 bay units. Due to the heat of the CPU and other system components inside a typical server, internally installed units generally run above 100*.

Q: What temperature should the alarm be set at to prevent damage to the drives?
A: Statistically, every degree of higher temperature shortens the life of the drive. To avoid damaging the hard drive, we recommend you set the temperature alarm to about 130*F. (it also helps avoid annoying alarms on hot days!)

Q: One of my drives alarms every time I power the unit up.
A: This can be caused by an incorrect threshold setting. Follow these steps to reset the factory defaults: 1) Power down the unit 2) Hold down both arrow buttons simultaneously and power the unit up 3) Continue holding the buttons for at least 5-10 seconds. If the problem persists, the fan may not be turning and you replace the unit. Contact us for warranty coverage and replacement.

Q: One of my High-Rely drives runs hotter than the others.
A: It is not unusual for some drives to run slightly hotter. We've noticed it's usually the middle drives in a stack that run hotter. It's not unusual for internally mounted HR drives (inside a PC) to run significantly hotter than external drive enclosures. For reliability, we highly recommend external drive bay units. The internal HR drives have a shorter warranty for this reason.

Q: I clicked on "safely remove hardware" and was given a message that the drive cannot be safely removed?
A: This usually means you have a program or window open that is still referencing that drive letter. Close all open windows, including "My Computer" or Windows Explorer and wait a minute to see if you can safely remove hardware. Some Windows Operating systems seem to erroneously keep files open so if you know the drive is quiet, go ahead and remove it anyway. Windows does this when it thinks there is a program that is using the drive. The program "WhoLockMe" will determine what program is causing the problem. Run the program, doing a "mountvol G: /D" which will remove the drive letter. Once this has been done, you should be able to safely remove the media. The program "WhoLockMe" can be downloaded from http://http://www.dr-hoiby.com/WhoLockMe/index.php.

Compatibility Questions

• What operating systems are your solutions compatible with?
• What Backup Software should I use?

Q: What operating systems are your solutions compatible with?
A:

• Microsoft Windows XP Professional
• Microsoft Windows Vista
• Microsoft Windows 2003 Server
• Windows 2008 Server and varients

• Macintosh OSX
• Novell 6.x
• Newer Linux that support eSATA nd USB 3.0

Q: What Backup Software should I use?
A: Most modern backup software can use hard drives as a destination. We like imaging solutions like StorageCraft Shadowprotect. http://www.storagecraft.com/