I actually developed skills of being able to

reassemble the door, like to take a, to cannibalize another tape and

take the little door off and putting it onto a tape that I needed it on.

Yeah, I guess that's why the tape evolved.

Yeah

Hi, and welcome to Backup Central's Restore it All podcast.

I'm your host, W.

Curtis Preston, AKA Mr.

Backup and I have with me, my vaccine side effects, counselor Prasanna

Malaiyandi how's it going, Prasanna?

I am not a medical doctor.

Any advice I give is should not be construed as medical advice.

Please seek professional help.

If you need some.

I'm doing okay, Curtis, how are you

oh, it was a pretty as a pretty rough day yesterday.

I, um, and I don't know if it's, you know, because I chose to do both.

I got my, you know, I got my, my fourth COVID jab as well as I got

the second of the shingles vaccines.

And I got both of them at one time.

And it's, this is actually of, of all of the shots that I've had recently.

Cause you know, I get my annual flu shot and I got all the COVID shots

and um, Uh, and I got the shingles shot, but the first shingles shot,

that sounds like it shouldn't sound the way that anyway, shingles shot.

Uh, this is the first time that I was, it just knocked me on

my butt and, uh, I took drugs.

Didn't help.

I just, so I just laid around and moaned and groaned.

So really all I could do is call my friends

But you're feeling better, a little better.

I'd say I'm at about 90%, which is

really that's, let's be honest.

That's how that's,

that's most

as good as I need to do to do a podcast.

I mean,

Oh,

If If I be on stage or something, that would be a problem,

Well, I'm glad you're feeling better, Curtis.

And yeah, like you said, hopefully by the end of today, you should

be back up to a hundred percent.

Yeah.

Uh, or a hundred percent of me, which is, you know, who knows

what that is for other people,

Your bubbly you.

Come on, Curtis

uh, bubbly me.

Yeah.

Um, but, uh, yeah, I, you know, I'm fully, fully support all the vaccines

and everything, but sometimes you get those, you get those side effects.

Well, I told you, I think we, maybe we talked about

on the podcast, but yeah, when I got my first booster shot back during

Thanksgiving, like we basically had to, we did it the day before Thanksgiving,

which is the wrong time to do it.

Thanksgiving day, my wife and I, neither of us could get up.

Like I was just.

Exhausted like fever, you name it.

I had the symptoms and so we ended up postponing Thanksgiving

dinner till the next day.

Druva had our, our SKO last week.

Uh, you know, my wife wanted to get the shots last week.

Cause we have an upcoming trip where we going to be hanging out

with a bunch of family members.

So we wanted to get the booster and I didn't want to get it right before SKO.

And I'm glad, I'm glad I didn't.

That would have been a crappy

That would have been miserable

uh, speaking of Druva, uh, Prasanna and I work for different

companies and, uh, I work for Druva.

He works for Zoom, and this is not a podcast of either company.

Any opinions that you hear are ours

or Curtis's really

Pretty much, uh, and be sure to rate us at

ratethispodcast.com/restore and, uh, or, you know, on your favorite

podcatcher just scroll down to wherever they have their ratings and give us

some stars and some comments, uh,

Curtis loves reading the comments.

He wants more comments.

People come

on.

give us comments.

We love it.

Um, and, uh, also if you, you know, if you have something to say in

this space, backup recovery archive, uh, cybersecurity, ransomware

tape, disc cloud, I don't know.

Did I cover it?

Privacy, privacy as well?

Absolutely.

Um, you know, We'd love to have you on just reach out, to reach

out to me at wcurtispreston@gmail or @wcpreston on Twitter.

So let, uh, let us get on to our guest.

He is, uh, been in the data protection space for longer than

I have, which is saying something.

And, um, having worked at a number of, uh, companies and he is now,

I love, this is actually what made me invite him on the podcast.

I was looking on LinkedIn and his title says data protection

warrior, I love that title.

I may just steal that title.

The heck with Mr.

Backup, I'm going to go with data protection, warrior, uh, and

Crusader of LTO tape and RDX that.

Welcome to the podcast, Patrick

Thank you very much for inviting me, uh,

looking forward to the podcast.

And, uh, and actually I should call you pat right now, Patrick,

That's right Make it Pat.

Yeah, no problem.

So welcome.

Welcome to the podcast, Pat.

And, uh, I think the first thing we have to get off the, off the,

off the table here is that whatever that is behind you, because it looks

So I grew up, uh, all over the United States, but spent most

of my time in Southern California.

Um, and actually right in Aliso beach where these, this sport began.

That's a skim board, basically.

It's, I've been making these since I was a kid.

I got out to Colorado.

I still take vacations and I still make them on, take them with me and

then, uh, for friends and family.

So they'll give me a call and say, Hey, we're now in Florida.

Can you help me out?

So yeah, I still make them and they're pretty fun.

So for people who may not be

familiar, what's a skim board?

So, especially in Southern California, the beaches are steep.

Okay.

And the water is cold.

So the water comes up and splashes back down, you run across the

shoreline, as the water is going down.

If you're good, you throw the board, jump on it and slide down.

If you're really good, you slide down towards the incoming wave and

it's a, it's a short break and you come up it and you come back down.

Um,

And it's, it's an amazing sport.

I can't do that.

I can sort of go horizontal maybe three or four times.

So they've got to stop and sit down, but that skimboarding

Gotcha.

And so it's got no fins or anything that would be,

nothing.

Yeah, no fins.

It's flat, a little bit of a, of a spoon to it.

And, uh, yeah, it's a lot of fun.

Amazing.

Um, I actually, I, I, I think I've seen that some, cause I, you know, I live in

Southern California, but I don't spend, I don't spend enough time at the beach,

but I I've seen that, but I, I don't know.

I don't think I knew what I was looking at.

Yeah,

But, uh, but you, you are a, I guess, an avid

skim boarder to the point of actually making your own skim boards

that's about it.

and you live in, you know, a little far from the

A little far, but, uh, I've been here for 20 years.

I love Denver.

I love, uh, it works out well for business because you can

get anywhere you want to get to.

We've got all the weather, sometimes all the weather in the same day, but

we have all the weather, so it's good.

Yeah.

I've spent quite a bit of time in and around Boulder and Denver and, um, having

visited a lot of the, you know, the tape companies that tend to be out there.

Um, and I, I ha I have some pictures of what is, what is now an abandoned

factory or whatever, you know, the, the tape drive right out there.

W what that used to be StorageTek facilities, right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I've got some really good photos of the, of the street signs for Tape Drive, but

I used to work on Tape Drive,

visit the office, used to visit the campus out there.

So at my, one of my prior employers, EMC had a office on

Tape Drive right off Tape Drive.

Interesting.

those factories that you probably have pictures of.

But I think when I went out there, it was just like an abandoned field.

I think all those factories were

gone.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's pretty.

I'll let, um, pat, has anything

happened out

there

No, no, they moved on obviously, uh, the land's got a lot of

value, but for now it's still a empty lot.

Hmm.

Hey, you know, anybody looking for some, for some manufacturing facilities

go, uh, plenty of land out there is, is it that is Boulder, right?

Yes, it is just as you come down the hill, it's off to your right.

It's a great location.

Right, right.

Uh, and you can, you have access to Pat, so, but Pat, you have a job.

You work actually for hPE, right?

That's correct.

So I'm a, I'm a business partner manager.

I work with our, uh, HPE partners to help them sell more, you know, tape media,

tape libraries, the whole business of data protection, but focusing on currently

focusing on the tape media, uh, the RDX product, which is a little bit unique.

Uh, and then helping out with tape libraries.

I'm going to ask the obvious question just because

most of our listeners are probably like isn't tape dead and I'm sure

we're going to talk about that.

Just playing.

I know we've had a lot of podcasts episodes talking about tape, but

just for all the listeners who may not have heard some of our past

episodes, uh, pat, maybe you could give

your

you just, you just hurt my heart

I know.

So, so this is me channeling our listeners

So it's interesting because I, I started out selling nine track tape

way back when the reels I've got one over here, but so that tapes around for

a long time, it had a 20 year lifespan and then tape moved on to all types of

technologies, competing technologies.

Each one, each new evolution had a better capacity, a better throughput

working on better quality, all those goals, but it was a competition.

And so you'd walk into a company and they had one of each okay.

Or 20 of each types of technology back in the day, DLT AIT, eight

millimeter, a bunch that moved on to a group, the LTO group, and

sort of solidified on a standard.

Multiple manufacturers, all designing the specifications around

the cartridge, the media, the tape drive, all those components.

And it's a group effort.

We do compete, but it's a group effort.

So it allows some stability in the marketplace to continually

bring out the next evolution.

The next level of, of technology.

Um, but as a group.

Okay.

So if someone has a preference for ABC company, they can buy it from ABC or XYZ.

They all work together.

Um, and nowadays the, the short answer is tape is as fast or faster than disk.

I like saying that

Hmm.

it's got a longer shelf life, meaning you can

store data for about 30 years.

Disk can't do that.

It is better for the environment because you can store so much capacity of data

in a very small space that it saves on, you know, data center, um, resources.

Okay.

If you could put all your data on a disc, that'd be great, but it would

cost so much in terms of space for those systems for power, for cooling.

And so I smiled because.

Data is growing so fast.

The most cost effective way to store large amounts of data

for long purposes is on tape.

It's not going to go away.

And then specifically your HPE, my brand of tape can fit in anybody's

tape drive in anybody's tape library.

So all these companies that are creating this content.

I have to put that data somewhere safely.

And it's not really an argument because you look at the actual data and say, oh,

well, it's the cost and where to do this.

This makes sense.

So again, I smile a lot.

It's a good, it's a good marketplace.

And I never, I never used that phrase,

you know, because it's been around forever and I just, you know,

I, I just can't see that phrase.

You mentioned the unknown

reigns.

Yeah.

I think that when you look at tape versus disc about the only thing that

disc is better at is random access.

Right?

Um, I mean, tape, it has.

Um, uh, error rate, right?

It has a longer storage time.

It, uh, power, power consumption is, is vastly different.

In fact, I remember, uh, years ago writing a thing that talked about

the fact that even if disk were free, the tape would still be cheaper

because of the power savings over

time.

Right.

Yeah, and it's not so great at random access, right?

Oddly enough, it can do random access.

We have the darn it.

LTFS.

Oh, LTF.

Yeah.

So you, you can make an LTO tape look like a file system.

It will be the slowest performing random access file system you've

ever used, but it will work.

Um, but I w I wouldn't use it for that.

Like, as a, as a human interacting with that, you would not want to do that.

Right.

But it can do that.

Why would someone use LTFS over.

Just storing something on LTO tape.

Uh, it is, as you say, a better way of organizing

the data on physical tape, so you can get to it faster.

And there are multiple data management software packages out

there that take advantage of that.

So that when you and I click on a video online somewhere, that's probably coming

off a tape somewhere to a disc and being stationed there for multiple access.

But it's coming off tape because they can't keep everything on disc.

I mean, like you said, if this was free, When you look at the new, uh,

stories of datacenters being put in by all these major corporations, a

lot of them social media, the size of those facilities is, is unbelievable.

If it was all disk, it would be three times bigger.

Okay.

Me just physical space.

There's just a better ability to put data on tape than on disk for those reasons.

Which reminds me of something that I, all that I also say

rather frequently, which is, I think if the average person saw what the

average build of these large social media companies were in these cloud companies.

They would be very surprised by the amount of tape in those environments.

Wouldn't you say?

Right.

Right.

But people like my family will come up to me and say, but dad, what

about, uh, what about the cloud?

You're gonna lose your job!

And the answer is.

The cloud has a lot of tape in it.

They're our best customers, because for cost reasons, they can't keep

all of your documentation, all of your images and all that on disc.

They're trying to be businesspeople.

And they look at the scale and the speeds and yeah, there's a, there's a lot of

room for growth in the, in the LTO market.

Uh, and the tape market definitely.

It's an interesting point.

You made Pat, which I hadn't, I, it should have dawned on me, but it wasn't obvious

is your video streaming example, right.

Where people are accessing video on demand or whatever else.

And the companies themselves are storing it on tape.

Like that never came across to me as, yeah.

That is probably the most likely method that they're doing.

Just like you said, for cost reasons.

I'm sure there is, like, you mentioned like buffering and other things to make

sure that it performs well once the first copies read, but yeah, keeping that stuff

on tape probably makes the most sense.

If you look at, and there's multiple stories, uh, in

the market, one in areas, you know, media, entertainment and sports.

of those games and that kind of a smile, all those games you're being

recorded, multiple angles, and they're being kept for five, 10 years.

So that a, a news, uh, sports center can say, well, let's get a recap of all the

games that, that Bob Smith played in.

They ask the question, it goes out, it goes onto the tape libraries

to access all the information.

They need, load up the tapes, download whatever copies they need and boom,

they have a full story of all that data and they just can't do it.

I shouldn't say can't, but you can't do it physically on disk

because of the comparison and capacities and power and cooling.

Right.

I I'd say the other, you know, earlier I said the, the, the, uh, the one

thing that disk could do better, the other thing disc can do better, which

I, which I probably should've also mentioned is the ability to go any speed.

Right.

Um, which, which really became, I think the primary problem that tape

experienced in the backup space, right.

It certainly was for me.

And it's why, why we started using things like multiplexing, which is, um, you

know, it's, it, it was a necessary evil.

Um, and you know, we, we, we had, um, a Ricky Martin from NetApp

that was talking about that.

And he was just talking about, he just referred to it as just evil.

Right.

You just see I'm like, well, it's a necessary evil back in the day because

tape was not good at going slow.

It, I don't think it's got any better at going slow these days than it was before.

And so that's why it became problematic in backup and recovery.

And we used multiplexing for a while to sort of create, I dunno, a buffer zone

there, if you will, but it was such a bad thing in that it made backups.

Okay.

But it made restores worse.

But that's why I think tape really went down, uh, in the backup space.

But what has happened is what you're talking about is tape being used in the

primary and secondary storage spaces.

Not as much in the backup space.

Um,

So even on the team that I work with, we do argue, we talk

about new marketing ideas and what we should be focusing and some say.

Uh, it's all about backup and data protection.

Um, and then others say, no, no, no, it's all about archive.

Okay.

There was what are our strengths?

Um, and again, you can store on flash.

You can store on disc, you can store on tape, you got choices.

Um, but on the backup side, you know, for all the current, uh, newsworthy

issues we're having with ransomware, the idea to copy all your data.

then take that copy and take it off the network.

They talk about offline air gap, um, and it's easy to do with tape.

So it's a copy, but once it's put onto the tape moves onto

the, into the slot, it's offline.

If they break into your network, it's pretty hard to get to the content on tape.

it's hard to get to the content on tape because it's not on-line.

And then you make two copies and one goes off site.

So for backup, that's just a, a huge boom, hate to say it for tape

because of those two features.

Get it offline and get it off site.

It's easy.

The bigger one, as you said is for archive.

I shouldn't say bigger, but the other one is for archive

because there's so much content.

I saw a note today, uh, from, uh, IDC talking about 40% growth.

Across all companies per year,

Yeah.

so per year.

So that data that you created a year ago, you're required to keep it maybe

has value for engineering purposes or for legal reasons or for content,

but you want to get it off your high powered high-performance disc systems

and get it off site and get it offline.

And then when you need it, you can get to it.

We've had a couple of guests on the podcast that have talked

about, they're basically exactly what you're saying, that, that it's hard to

beat a tape when it comes to ransomware.

Right.

That it's all it's, it's purely offline, right?

Completely offline.

If I could jump in, one concept of tape is to make a copy and send

it off to someplace like iron mountain.

That's great.

There's some issues regarding your recovery time, your cost

to keep it there, et cetera, but it is a great fail safe because.

Iron mountain and other companies like that have very secure environments.

In some cases, they're actually under a mountain.

And so your data, if it's critical for you for a 10 year

storage of data, that's awesome.

Very well protected.

Another blend is to have onsite data on your own tape library system.

And then a second copy either in the cloud or at a second facility.

That is, has a duplicate system set up.

And so when you talk about disaster recovery, it's not just ransomware,

it could be an actual natural, uh, effect on your own building,

you know, hurricanes, et cetera.

So again, you have local access if it's an attack, uh, but you have a

second site so that if you lose your facility, for whatever reason, you've

got all your data somewhere else.

I like to use things like for what they're really good at.

And I do think that tape is really good at this at holding, you know, large

amounts of data for long periods of time, and also being able to cheaply create

another copy that I can store wherever.

Right.

Um, so I, and there are technologies.

To have two tape libraries replicating between each other.

Right.

So that we don't have to continually be shipping tapes back and forth.

Um, And, and that's why I think when I go to, it's been, it's been a couple of

years for, for obvious reasons since I've been to NAB and I didn't go this time.

I was, I was a little busy, but NAB was just last week.

The national association of broadcasters, for those of you that don't follow that.

And there's a huge interest in tape, in the broadcast space.

For exactly what you're talking about.

The broadcast and entertainment spaces.

They create a ridiculous amount of data very quickly, and then they

want to store all of it forever.

Yeah.

Just

imagine the Olympics and taking like eight K video.

Right.

And that's an enormous amount of data for how many weeks, and now you want to

store it because in like four years or whatever else, you're going to want to

be able to pull up those clips again.

Are you going to store it all on disc?

Probably not.

Probably not.

So, uh, but let's take it, but let's take a turn.

So we talked about tape for awhile.

You have another technology, which is not tape, which, um, I, I ha

I don't see a lot about lately.

In fact, I actually thought it had, I apologize, but I thought

it had gone by the wayside.

And when I saw that in your bio, I said, Hey, we've got to get

Pat on to talk to us about RDX.

So first off, why don't you describe what RDX is.

Sure.

I'm looking around the room here.

It's not the car by the way.

Pardon me?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

It's not the car, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

It's not the acura rDX.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Exactly.

No.

No.

So, so you mentioned Boulder.

I believe the company was called pro store developed a technology in Boulder for RDX,

and they developed it for awhile and then sold the rights to multiple companies.

Um, like, like Tandberg, for instance, uh, Tandberg Overland, and it's, it's used

by Dell, HPE and other companies today.

Um, to put out in the marketplace, in a nutshell, it

is a disc drive and a cartridge.

So it looks similar to this, but it's actually a disc drive and it

has a small docking station, usually USB attached and same concept.

I want a copy of my data.

I want to be able to eject it and then throw it into a safe, or take

it off site to a secure facility or send it securely to somebody else

and have them load it for themselves.

So it's disc in a cartridge, um, been around for, oh gosh, I'm getting old,

more than 15 years, uh, is still quite popular in some of the workstations

that are put out by HP and HPE, uh, like the ProLiant, um, where someone has a

series of disks and all their content.

And as an engineer, they say, or a creative person, they say, give

me a copy and I want it on disc.

Okay.

So they just pop it up.

And again, this portable, et cetera, same kinds of, uh, or similar

advantages to tape, uh, what I do with both, you know, if I get to an

a stage, I just throw them because the RDX disk cartridge is designed

to take an impact of like three feet.

And I usually just throw it though.

Um, so it's a different level than say a standard USB, uh, external drive.

Uh, it's designed for somebody who's moving a lot of data off an on disk.

Okay.

Um, one example I thought of as the, uh, uh, law enforcement offices evolved

into body cams and, uh, surveillance cameras, um, and cameras mounted

on, on the police cars, a normal it environment had to jump a factor of 10.

Like a factor of 10 to maintain all that data and you can do it with USB drives.

Uh, but you can also do with a more secure product called RDX.

So it, it's bringing some of the functionality

of tape to desk, if you will, or it's basically making, making tape.

Look like disk, what does it actually look like when you, when you put a cartridge

in, does it show up as a drive letter or.

Yep.

Sure.

It looks like a disc drive.

It is a disc drive.

Okay.

So, and for some people, again, depending on your environment, um,

retail businesses, they can use tape.

And a lot of times they used to use the four millimeter dat.

Okay.

As their daily backup for all their, uh, uh, POS environment.

And that worked just fine.

The technology went away and so they were asking, well, what else is there?

A disk in a cartridge is very easy for each individual retail store.

And imagine all those stores out there to just each act, it

toss it in the safe every night.

It's a very secure way of keeping a copy of all those transactions.

Um, and again, every customer says tape or disk, you know,

what, what makes sense for me?

We all have a preference.

uh, at some point the capacity benefits of tape, they can get cheap for storing data

outweigh the capacity and the cost for RDX, but for one terabyte to five terabyte

environments, it has a great play.

Is there a reason though?

Someone wouldn't just use like an external portable hard drive or

another mechanism like

that

So, do you have one of those at

home?

You must have one.

Yeah, so I do too.

Okay.

So I back up my stuff, I do a, a USB drive if I was doing that and

unplugging it every single day.

Okay.

At some point that's not what it's designed for.

Okay.

Just the mere fact of plugging it in and plugging it out.

That USB, if it's always plugged in or plugged in once

a month and you do your backup.

that's fine.

But individuals who are going through five 10 of

these external drives and plugging them in for different reasons.

It makes more sense to have a docking stations that is designed for anti-static.

Um, human beings just shoving it in.

Okay.

And all the security you need for that kind of multiple volumes being

stored on multiple cartridges.

Okay.

And it's all plugged in once, either internal or external.

So it's just a different level.

Um,

By the way, your earlier comment, it

gave me multiple flashbacks.

I just wanted to tell you that, uh, when, when you mentioned retail and you

mentioned DAT drives because, uh, I cut my teeth, uh, like the, the most popular

tape drive that I spent a lot of my time in, early at Deezer HP nine thousands.

I don't know if you remember the HB 9,000 series, but, um, I had, I had

an army of those on my data center and we had the DDS one and the DDS

two drives and, uh, those things.

Just a big thing with them was to not drop them.

Cause they were, they were good tape dries, but if you drop that tape

from a height of like, you know me, that it would go shattering, right?

The, the, the door would go shattering.

And, uh, I actually got, I actually developed skills

of being able to reassemble.

The door, like to take a, to cannibalize another tape and take

the little door off and putting it onto a tape that I needed it

on.

Yeah, I guess that's why the tape evolved.

Yeah, I, well, cause LTO is, is by comparison or by contrast

is much more, uh, You know, rigid, right?

Uh, it handles and later generations of LTO are more rigid than earlier.

Generations of LTO.

In fact, I, I have this information from a very different

standpoint than most people.

I actually was making a music video where, um, we shattered.

Tapes against, there was just one shot that I wanted and

we did it in slow motion.

And, uh, we wanted to shatter an LTO tape against the wall and we wanted

it to hit the wall and then explode.

Right.

And it turned out it was impossible to make that shot.

And they only, because it wouldn't do it.

And, uh, no matter how hard we throw it.

And so what I ended up having to do was to disassemble the

cartridge, check out all the screws.

Right.

And then tape it together, put, put scotch tape on the outside so that, so

that, uh, when we throw it against the wall, it would, uh, so like I said, it's

a very different, the average person has not tried to destroy, uh, uh, uh, a tape

for, um, you know, for a music video.

So what, what, so the, the use of RDX that you talked about, I heard

you talk about retail environments.

What are other places that people are using them?

What are other things that people are using them for?

I hate to limit it because it really comes down to, you

know, what are your requirements.

But I'll try, I'll start with that.

If you're an environment where you're working on.

One terabyte to say five terabytes of data.

Okay.

On a regular basis, you need a backup.

You need something rugged.

Um, RDX might be used for, you know, laptop environment where

scientists are going out into the field and analyzing, uh, uh, the

data from either Marine or geological information and they need something.

They can back up their laptop.

And then putting their, their briefcase and come back when the

field and have the data secure.

Okay.

It's used on, I've seen applications in oil exploration vessels, and

that's an amazing technology where they go out and they troll with all

these sensors and gather all this data from the ground under the water.

It's so much data, but they're on a ship.

And so once they collect it, they want to be able to securely, put it on something.

And the it person says I need all LTO, the appar it person says,

I need all RDX again, a choice.

Okay.

Uh, for what they see is more beneficial for their environment.

So there's some big scale type applications.

Uh, but the smallest scale is someone who is a content creator at home.

And you walk in their office and they've got multiple USB drives at different

sizes, and they've knocked some off the table and they've lost content there.

They need to hear about RDX and I'll admit it's not a well talked about product.

Um, but it has a great application.

I was even thinking, as you're talking about the

content creators, even probably people photographers, videographers, right?

The people in the field taking 4k video and things like that.

Right.

For the most part, I think they end up just throwing them onto SSD drives.

Right.

Portable hard drives, but like you mentioned, right.

They're not always the most robust right.

In all situations and things like that.

And so maybe that could potentially be another use case as

Exactly.

I would assume.

Well, I I'm, I I'm going to assume, but you can verify or, or, or disagree the,

the, the bay, the docking station, it's less expensive than an LTO tape drive.

I'm assuming.

So you think about RDX and RDX as a removable cartridge

that has a disc drive in it.

I guess the key thing to think about is that majority of the

technology is here in the cartridge.

Okay.

It's a disk drive in a very well-designed case that has some anti-static issues.

Um, allows you to plug it in and plug it out multiple times without destroying

any connectors and the docking station.

Okay.

To be blunt, it's pretty low technology.

Okay.

It's got the cord going into the system and it might be internal.

Um, but it's very low cost.

So as we evolve through technology and someone said, I've got my

four millimeter dat technology backing up my office environment.

And I can't find L a DAT tapes anymore.

I can't find 4 mm tapes anymore and there, and they search and they pay a

lot of money for those tapes because they don't want to change their system.

One of the first issues they worry about going to the next level of tape

technology is that it might be over $500 over a thousand dollars over

$3,000 for a brand new LTO tape drive.

Right.

Without getting in trouble, a docking station under $250.

And they transition to this technology.

And in that environment, that cost to change technology is quite low.

And then they have, you know, the current disc drive in a

cartridge meets their needs.

So it sounds like the, the docking station is less expensive.

The quick look, I, the quick search that I did, it shows that the

media is more expensive than LTO.

Which makes sense, given all of the, the technology that's in there, just

like, you know what you talked about.

Right.

that is something that a potential customer needs to weigh out.

Right.

Um, in terms of, do I want a more expensive tape drive that will have, uh,

you know, less expensive media, it depends on how many of those you're buying.

Right.

And, and like you said, if, if, if you need, cause it was like,

it was around 500 bucks for, uh, for a five terabyte cartridge

that I, at least my quick search.

Whereas something like that with LTO is, is a hundred bucks or less, right?

So it just going to different different people are going

to find both of those useful.

I would think.

Exactly and that, and that is again, the customer makes the decision

based on what their data is, uh, what their concept is about disk or tape.

Um, and then, like you said, the docking stations for RDX is very low cost to step

into, um, as opposed to a tape drive.

Yeah.

The one question I had for you Pat, was I know we talked earlier about LTFS

and giving you sort of random access for data that's stored on LTO tapes.

I'm guessing with RDX because it is disc, right?

Your random access performance.

Everything else would be significantly better than tape.

Right.

In my mind, if I was a content creator and I have a drone,

by the way, I love my drone.

I've got a lot of grandkids.

I love chasing around the house, you know, or outside.

All that content I can put on an RDX and load it and access it and use

it and play with it and then take it out, put it back on the shelf.

And let's just call that summertime 2022.

Okay.

Um, with tape, I wouldn't be able to do that quite as easy.

I would take the content out, download it when I want to play

with it and then put it back on.

So for different environments, It's an advantage to have a, a disc based system.

Okay.

As opposed to a tape based system.

That's all

Makes sense.

Like Curtis was saying, I think the different use cases, right.

You have to look and see, what is your use case?

What are your requirements?

And based on that you have options.

Right.

And again, in talking to sales teams and they asked the question, great question.

Where does RDX fit and where does LTO tape fit?

Usually the customer has already made that decision, but, but the real opportunity

is when you find somebody, like I mentioned, like a Sheriff's department,

that's buying 10 I'll call them raw.

USB disc.

And somebody is responsible to collect all the data off all that

incoming video, track it for legal reasons, deliver it to a courthouse.

And there maybe buying, you know, 10 disc drives, hard disc drives at a time.

That person I think, would love to have something more secure like this.

Okay.

Because the the volume of media that they're actually

handling, plugging and plugging.

This solves that problem.

Okay.

It's more secure if you drop both of them, this type of cartridge is more secure

than your standard, uh, retail USB drive.

So Pat, would it make sense for a home user to use RDX?

I hate to say yes quickly, but the answer is yes, because you're

looking at the cost of your system, whatever laptop you have, et cetera.

Um, to be able to get a docking station, for under 300 bucks and then

put all your, all your events on a cartridge and keep it on the shelf.

That makes sense.

I, I would find it hard to understand someone buying a, a tape drive.

Like an LTO-8 and using that for their content.

It's just so much capacity.

Now, if you have that much capacity.

Great.

Okay.

But it's overkill.

And the investment costs to begin is high.

Yep.

Yeah.

The, The, average, the average home, I would say it would be the, it

would be a power home user, right?

Someone who's creating content.

Um, although in today's day and age, that could be my granddaughter.

Who's nine.

I know.

right.

They're all, they're all independent filmmakers at home these days.

Right.

Um, So, all right, well, on that note, uh, I think we'll round things out here and

say, thanks Pat, for coming on the podcast

Hey, thanks for having me enjoy talking about it anytime.

and thanks Prasanna for a, your a great questions as always

I try.

I try and I hope you feel better soon, Curtis.

me too.

Uh, and thanks to our listeners and be sure to subscribe so