I don’t cover much gear on the site, but I’m always ready to cover new, innovative tools for storage and backup. No matter what end of digital media production you work in, crucial files lost or corrupted due to sloppy backup routines will make clients drop away quicker than just about anything.
One product to handle your backup debuted recently: Prime-Cache from Cache-A comes with a good rep, as the company’s founders Phil Ritti, Mark Ostlund, and Tom Goldberg were key players on the original Quantum team which developed the well-regarded A-Series SDLT and LTO video data storage products.
The new model–Prime-Cache—aims to handle the archiving needs of small post houses and smaller field production. The company describes the device as the “easiest to use network-attached archive appliance available.” Prime-Cache writes data on low-cost, industry-standard 800GB LTO-4 tape cartridges (LTO is a secure, portable, interchangeable standard with a long history in the corporate world.)
Operating system-independent, Prime-Cache works within Windows, MacOS and Unix environments, plugs into a standard Ethernet network and backs-up at speeds greater than 50MBs. Not exactly inexpensive at $6995, it’s certainly much cheaper than finding a new client.
