PhD I: Do you wanna be a subject ?
Professor D: Yeah , I be pretty good .
PhD I: We Yeah .
Grad F: We 're about we 're about half halfway through our disk right now .
PhD B: Yeah .
PhD I: That was one of our concerns .
PhD B: Are we only half ? I thought we were more than that .
Grad F: We 're probably a little more than that because we 're using up some space that we shouldn't be on . So , once everything gets converted over to the disks we 're supposed to be using we 'll be probably , uh , seventy - five percent .
PhD B: Well , when I was looking for space for Thilo , I found one disk that had , uh , I think it was nine gigs and another one had seventeen .
Grad F: Yep .
PhD B: And everything else was sorta committed . Uh Grad F: Were those backed - up or non - backed - up ?
PhD B: Those were non - backed - up .
PhD E: Non - back - up .
Grad F: Right . So that 's different .
PhD B: S oh , you 're talking about backed - up .
Grad F: I 'm much more concerned about the backed - up . The non - backed - up ,
PhD B: I haven't looked to see how much of that we have .
Grad F: yeah , i is cheap . I mean , if we need to we can buy a disk , hang it off a s uh , workstation . If it 's not backed - up the sysadmins don't care too much .
Professor D: Yeah . So , I mean , pretty much anytime we need a disk , we can get it at the rate that we 're PhD I: You can I shouldn't be saying this , but , you can just you know , since the back - ups are every night , you can recycle the backed - up diskspace .
Grad F: Yeah . But that 's that 's  that 's risky .
Professor D: Yeah . You really shouldn't be saying Grad F: Mmm . Mmm .
PhD I: I didn't say that .
Grad F: Yeah , that 's right .
PhD I: I didn't say that .
Grad F: Beep that out .
Professor D: Da - we had allowed Dave to listen to these  these , uh , recordings .
PhD I: Right .
Professor D: Um  Yeah , I me and there 's been this conversation going on about getting another file server , and and we can do that .
PhD I: Mm - hmm .
Professor D: We 'll take the opportunity and get another big raft of  of disk , I guess .
Grad F: Yeah . It 's really the back - up issue rather than the file server issue .
PhD I: Well , I think {comment} I think there 's an argument for having you know , you could use our old file server for for disks that have data that is very rarely accessed , and then have a fast new file server for data that is , um , heavily accessed .
Grad F: Yeah . My understanding is , the issue isn't really the file server .
PhD I: Yeah .
Grad F: We could always put more disks on .
PhD I: Yeah . It 's the back it 's the back - up capaci
Grad F: It 's the back - up system .
PhD I: Yeah .
Grad F: So which is near saturation , apparently . So .
PhD B: I think I think the file server could become an issue as we get a whole bunch more new compute machines .
Professor D: Soon .
PhD B: And we 've got , you know , fifty machines trying to access data off of Abbott at once .
Grad F: Well , we 're alright for now because the network 's so slow .
PhD I: I mean , I think I think we 've raised this before and someone said this is not a reliable way to do it , but the What about putting the stuff on , like , C - CD - ROM or DVD or something ?
Grad F: Yeah . That was me . I was the one who said it was not reliable . The - they they wear out .
PhD I: OK . Oh , OK .
Grad F: Yeah . The the th
PhD I: But they wear out just from sitting on the shelf ?
Grad F: Yep . Absolutely .
PhD I: Or from being read and read ?
Grad F: No . Read and write don't hurt them too much unless you scratch them .
PhD I: Oh , OK .
Grad F: But the r the write once , and the read - writes , don't last . So you don't wa you don't wanna put ir un reproduceable data on them .
PhD I: Uh - huh .
PhD B: Wear out after what amount of time ?
Grad F: Year or two .
Postdoc A: Would it be ?
Professor D: Year or two ?
Grad F: Yep .
Professor D: Wow .
Postdoc A: Hmm .
PhD I: But if that then you would think you 'd hear much more clamoring about data loss
PhD E: Yeah .
PhD I: and Professor D: I mean , yeah , all the L
Grad F: I I don't know many people who do it on CD . I mean , they 're the most fo
Professor D: LDC - all the LDC distributions are on CD - ROM .
PhD G: Yeah .
Grad F: They 're on CD , but they 're not tha that 's not the only source .
PhD G: Like Grad F: They have them on disk . And they burn new ones every once in a while . But if you go  if you go k
PhD I: But , you know , we have PhD G: But we have like thirty you know , from ten years ago ?
Professor D: We have all sorts of CD - ROMs from a long time ago .
PhD G: No .
PhD E: Yeah .
PhD G: Yeah !
Grad F: Well , th th OK .
PhD G: Ten years ago .
PhD I: Right .
PhD G: Ninety - one , and they 're still all fine .
Professor D: Yeah .
Grad H: Were they burned or were they pressed ?
PhD G: Uh , both . I 've burned them and they 're still OK .
Grad H: Yeah .
Grad F: The the pressed ones last for
PhD G: I mean , usually they 're Grad F: well , not forever , they 've been finding even those degrade .
Professor D: Oh , I see .
Grad F: But , uh , the burned ones I mean , when I say two or three years what I 'm saying is that I have had disks which are gone in a year .
PhD G: That 's what I Grad F: On the average , it 'll probably be three or four years . But , uh I I you don't want to per p have your only copy on a media that fails .
PhD I: Mmm .
Grad F: And they do . Um , if you have them professionally pressed , y you know , they 're good for decades .
PhD I: So how about ? So so how about putting them on that plus , like on a on on DAT or some other medium that isn't risky ?
Grad F: I think th um , we can already put them on tape . And the tape is hi is very reliable .
PhD I: OK . Mm - hmm .
Grad F: So the the only issue is then if we need access to them . So that 's fine f if we don't need access to them .
PhD I: Right . Well , if if if you if they last Say , they actually last , like , five years , huh , in in the typical case , and and occasionally you might need to recreate one , and then you get your tape out , but otherwise you don't . Can't you just you just put them on ?
Grad H: So you just archive it on the tape , and then put it on CD as well ?
PhD I: Yeah . Right .
Grad F: Oh . So you 're just saying put them on C Ds for normal access .
Grad H: Yeah .
PhD I: Right .
PhD B: What you Grad F: Yeah . I mean , you can do that but that 's pretty annoying , because the C Ds are so slow .
PhD G: See Yeah .
Grad H: Yeah .
PhD I: Mmm .
PhD B: What 'd be nice is a system that re - burned the C Ds every year .
PhD G: H everytime it was a " gonna " " gonna die " .
Professor D: Well Grad F: Well , I mean , the C Ds are are an op
PhD E: Yeah .
PhD I: It 's like like dynamic ra DRAM .
PhD E: Just before .
PhD B: Yeah .
PhD G: Just before they be before it goes bad , it burns them in .
Grad F: The the CD is an alternative to tape .
Grad H: Yeah .
Grad F: ICSI already has a perfectly good tape system and it 's more reliable .
Professor D: You know I would think Grad F: So for archiving , we 'll just use tape .
PhD I: One one thing I don't understand is , if you have the data if if you if the meeting data is put on disk exactly once , then it 's backed - up once and the back - up system should never have to bother with it , uh , more than once .
Grad F: Well , regardless Well , first of all there was , um , a problem with the archive in that I was every once in a while doing a chmod on all the directories an or recursive chmod and chown , because they weren't getting set correctly every once in a while ,
PhD I: Mm - hmm .
Grad F: and I was just , doing a minus R star , not realizing that that caused it to be re - backed - up .
PhD I: Mm - hmm .
PhD G: Ah .
Grad F: But normally you 're correct . But even without that , the back - up system is becoming saturated .
PhD I: But but this back - up system is smart enough to figure out that something hasn't changed and doesn't need to be backed - up again .
Professor D: The b I think th the at least the once tha that you put it on , it would  it would {comment} kill that .
Grad F: Sure , but we still have enough changed that the nightly back - ups are starting to take too long .
PhD I: OK . So so then , if So so then , let 's Professor D: So .
Grad F: It has nothing to do with the meeting . It 's just the general ICSI back - up system is becoming saturated .
PhD I: Right . OK . Right . So , what if we buy , uh uh , what what do they call these , um high density ?
Grad F: Well , why don't you have this have a this conversation with Dave Johnson tha rather than with me ?
PhD I: No , no . Because this is maybe something that we can do without involving Dave , and and , putting more burden on him . How about we buy , uh uh uh , one of these high density tape drives ? And we put the data actually on non - backed - up disks . And we do our own back - up once and for all all , and then and we don't have to bother this @ @ up ?
Grad F: Actually , you know , we could do that just with the tape with the current tape .
PhD I: I dunno what the these tapes uh , at some point these I dunno . What kind of tape drive is it ?
Grad F: I dunno but it 's an automatic robot so it 's very convenient .
PhD I: Is it is ?
Professor D: Wh The o the one that we have ?
Grad F: You just run a program to restore them .
PhD I: Right .
Professor D: The I mean Grad F: Yeah .
PhD I: But it might interfere with their back - up schedule ,
PhD G: But Professor D: No , we have s we Don't we have our own ?
PhD I: eh .
Professor D: Something wi th that doesn't that isn't used by the back - up gang ? Don't we have something downstairs ?
Postdoc A: Well they PhD B: What kinda tape drive ?
Professor D: Just in ? Yeah .
Grad F: Well but no , but Andreas 's point is a good one . And we don't have to do anything ourselves to do that . They 're already right now on tape .
PhD I: Right .
Grad F: Right . So your your point is , and I think it 's a good one , that we could just get more disk and put it there .
PhD I: Mmm . On an XH uh , X X whatever partition .
Grad F: Yeah . That 's not a bad idea .
PhD I: Yeah .
Professor D: Yeah , that 's basically what I was gonna say , is that a disk is is so cheap it 's es essentially , you know , close to free . And the only thing that costs is the back - up issue , eh , to first order .
Grad F: So once it 's on tape PhD I: Right . Right .
Professor D: And we can take care of that by putting it on non - back up drives and just backing it up once onto this tape .
PhD I: Mm - hmm .
Grad F: I think that 's a good idea .
PhD I: Right .
Professor D: Oh . Yeah .
PhD I: OK .
Professor D: Good . It 's good .
PhD G: So , who 's gonna do these back - ups ? The people that collect it ?
Grad F: Uh Well , I 'll talk to Dave , and and see what th how {nonvocalsound} what the best way of doing that is .
PhD B: It 's probably gonna n
Grad F: There 's a little utility that will manually burn a tape for you , and that 's probably the right way to do it .
PhD B: Yeah , and we should probably make that part of the procedure for recording the meetings .
PhD G: Well , s
Grad F: Yep .
PhD G: Yeah . That 's what I 'm wondering , if Grad F: Well we 're g we 're gonna automate that .
PhD G: OK .
Grad F: My intention is to do a script that 'll do everything .
PhD G: I mean , you don't have to physically put a tape in the drive ?
Grad F: No . It 's all tape robot ,
PhD G: Or s ? s ? {comment} Oh , OK .
Grad F: so you just sit down at your computer and you type a command .
PhD G: So it 's just Oh , OK .
PhD I: Yeah , but then you 're effectively using the resources of the back - up system . Or is that a different tape robot ?
Grad F: Yeah .
PhD G: But not at the same time .
Grad F: But y but you would be anyway .
PhD B: No , no , no .
Grad F: Right ?
PhD B: He 's saying get a whole different drive .
Grad F: Because PhD I: No , no . See Grad F: But there 's no reason to do that .
PhD I: Yeah , just give a dedi
Grad F: It we already have it there and it it 's PhD I: Well , I 'm saying is @ @ i if you go to Dave , and and and ask him " can I use your tape robot ? " , he will say , " well that 's gonna screw up our back - up operation . "
Grad F: No , we won't . He 'll say " if if that means that it 's not gonna be backed - up standardly , great . "
Professor D: He - I Dave has has promoted this in the past . So I don't think he 's actually against it .
Grad F: Yeah . It 's it 's definitely no problem .
PhD I: Oh , OK . Alright .
Professor D: Yeah .
PhD I: Alright .
Professor D: OK .
PhD I: Good .
PhD G: What about if the times overlap with the normal back - up time ?
Grad F: Um , it 's it 's just it 's just a utility which queues up . It just queues it up and and when it 's available , it will copy it .
PhD G: OK .
Professor D: Yeah .
Grad F: And then you can tell it to then remove it from the disk or you can , you know , do it a a few days later or whatever you wanna do , after you confirm that it 's really backed - up .
PhD G: OK .
Grad F: NW ?
Postdoc A: You saying NW archive ?
Grad F: NW archive .
Postdoc A: Yep {comment} And if you did that during the day it would never make it to the nightly back - ups .
Grad F: That 's what it is .
Professor D: OK .
Grad F: Right .
Postdoc A: And then there wouldn't be this extra load .
PhD I: Well , it if he you have to put the data on a on a non - backed - up disk to begin with .
Postdoc A: Well , but you can have it NW archive to you can have , uh , a non - backed - up disk NW archived ,
Grad F: Right .
PhD I: So that so that otherwise you don't you Postdoc A: and it 'll never show up on the nightly back - ups .
Grad F: Right . And then it never PhD I: Right . Right .
Grad F: Right . Which I 'm sure would make ever the sysadmins very happy .
PhD I: Right .
Postdoc A: Yeah .
Grad F: So , I think that 's a good idea .
PhD I: OK .
Grad F: That 's what we should do .
PhD I: OK .
Grad F: So , that means we 'll probably wanna convert all all those files filesystems to non - backed - up media .
PhD B: That sounds good .
Professor D: Yeah .