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

1. Can I get your systems in different colors?
2. What is the "shelf life" of an HR backup as compared to tape?
3. Aren't tapes tougher? Can't they withstand dropping and rough handling more readily than hard drive?
4. Aren't tapes cheaper than hard drives per megabyte?
5. If tape is so terrible, why do so many people use it to back up their data?
6. How much does your 5-bay solution cost?
7. Can I use the operating system software to turn my 5 or 7 bay High-Rely system into a "poor mans RAID array?"

Q: Can I get your systems in different colors?
A: Most USB Hard Drive Backup systems are available in either black or beige. SATA Hard Drive Backup Systems are available in black only.

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.

ColossalStorage.net claims Hard drive data life at 3 to 7 years. We have 20 year old XT machines that have had no special care and they still boot fine and feel a Hard Drive life span is much longer.

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 our side of the story, 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. For example, DDS tapes are inexpensive (and very unreliable). Modern tapes, like the latest exabyte VXA-2 80GB tape, at the time of this writing cost $99 street price. Compare that to $140 for an 80GB HR drive (again, at the time of this writing). That's $1.23 per Gigabyte for tape vs $1.75 per Gigabyte for Hard Drive. Although these numbers may change over time, this gives you a quick comparison. The longer life span, convenience and reliability of random access media, more than compensates for the slight price difference.

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:

80GB VXA-2 Tape		$1.23/GB/YR
80GB HR Drive		$0.58/GB/YR

Consider the technology of a High Rely Hard Drive Backup: the electronics of the hard drive, the removable drive tray, the USB to IDE conversion, 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"

Q: How much does your 5-bay Hard Drive Backup solution cost?
A: That depends on the size of media that you need. Our product page will show products and pricing. Use our contact form if you would like a quote on a custom configuration for your specific needs.

Q: Can I use the operating system software to turn my 5 or 7 bay High-Rely Hard Drive Backup system into a "poor mans RAID array?"
A: Yes or No, depending on which of our units you are using. However, because the reliability of software RAIDs under Windows is poor, we strongly suggest that you do not use it. Because of this, it is not a configuration that we will support. But to answer the question completely: Yes – If you are using an eSATA unit with one of our Soft RAID controllers.  No – if you are using the USB units. This is because Windows 2000 server and above only allow you to do software mirroring or RAID 5 if the drives are formatted as "dynamic" disks. Since Windows restricts USB drives they cannot be converted to dynamic.

Technical Questions

1. How do your multi-bay systems connect to my server?
2. Is a USB 2.0 port required to connect the High-Rely backup system?
3. Ok, so I plug this USB cable into my server, then what?
4. Why do you require me to insert a key to unlock the media before I remove it?
5. Under Windows 2000, why do I have to click the "Safely remove hardware" icon before turning the High-Rely key and removing the media?
6. I want higher drive density. Can you build 8 drive or larger High-Rely systems?
7. Do your products support 48-bit addressing for large hard drives?
8. Can I change out the IDE hard drive in my High-Rely tray to a bigger one?
9. What is the largest media size I can use?
10. Can I remove the IDE drive inside the HR media tray and install it on a standard IDE controller?
11. What speed related issues should I be aware of?
12. Is eSATA signaling different than normal internal SATA?

Q: How do your multi-bay systems connect to my server?
A: The back of our drives have a single female USB "Type B" connector. Simply use a standard USB B to A cable to connect to the "Flat" USB to A Style Connector on most servers.

Q: Is a USB 2.0 port required to connect the High-Rely hard drive backup system?
A: A USB 2.0 connection provides maximum performance, and is highly recommended. However, you can also use a standard USB 1.1 port. If your machine only has the older style USB port, we recommend an inexpensive add-in board using the NEC chip set.

Q: Ok, so I plug this USB cable into my server, then what?
A: That's it! You will now see 1 to 7 new drive letters (depending on your model) available for you to write your backup jobs to.

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: Under Windows 2000, why do I have to click the "Safely remove hardware" icon before turning the High-Rely key and removing the media?
A: Turning the key powers down your USB hard drive, effectively "pulling the rug" out from underneath the operating system. We call powering down the hard drive without notifying the operating system a "dirty drive shutdown". Sometimes you will find that everything is just fine when you power the drive back up again. However, if Windows was still writing to the drives when you power them down, it can result in data loss and corrupted hard drives. Please always notify the operating system you are removing the drive before operating the key. We provide software that makes this a one click operation.

* NOTE: This is not necessary under Windows XP or Windows 2003 Server.
In Device Manager, under properties for each Removable Hard Drive, select "Optimize for fast removal". With this option selected, you will no longer have to click "Safely Remove Hardware."

Q: I want higher drive density. Can you build 8 drive or larger High-Rely hard drive backup systems?
A: Contact us if you want to discuss custom built drive configurations.

Q: Do your hard drive backup systems support 48-bit addressing for large hard drives?
A: Yes. We added this capability to support hard drives larger than 137GB.

Q: Can I change out the IDE hard drive in my High-Rely tray to a bigger one?
A: Yes - drives are all standard IDE. When you buy the media directly from High Rely you get the longer warranty.

Q: What is the largest media size I can use?
A: We have tested with 1TB hard drives.

Q: Can I remove the IDE drive inside the HR media tray and install it on a standard IDE controller?
A: Yes. The drive format of the High Rely hard drive is identical to that of an IDE and it will even boot on a standard IDE controller if you have it configured it to do so. It works with no additional partitioning or formatting.

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:

• USB 1.0 or 1.2 versus USB 2 - If the HR subsystem is inadvertently using USB 1.0 or 1.2 versus USB 2, 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. Ditto for *any* piece of software that hooks into the I/O. Try temporarily disabling any AV or anti-spyware software and testing the speed that way.
• Backing up over the ethernet - Make sure your tests are not backing up “over the ethernet wire.” In other words, the high-rely drive(s) should be plugged directly into the USB 2.0 port of the machine you are backing up. Backup speeds taking data off remote servers over the 100MB Ethernet network will be slower.
• 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.
• 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…… but it is generally not necessary because most backups will “overwrite” existing files.
• Backup software - Our speed tests were generally performed with Backup Now! – Not NTbackup or Veritas. We believe Backup Now! is faster.
• 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 dramatically slow down backups.
• Full vs. Incremental Backup - Our speed tests are always a “full” backup in “overwrite” mode. Incremental & differential backups that are “appended” may take longer.
• Verify Options - Any option to verify the backup off during performance testing doubles the backup time and should NOT be counted in the benchmark.
• Backup Agents - Any backup “agents” such as Exchange, open file, or SQL agents, will 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.

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