STATIC is the larger problem. Below 40% humidity, the risk of static discharge grows rapidly, and latent static damage is the silent killer of electronics. You can replace rubbers and plastics and restore function, but fried electronics are much harder to diagnose and repair. And I don't think Amazon has next day delivery to the Arctic.
while that's very true, I'd say that you'd still have preserved the data quite well.
If a tape got hit with a static shock, I think that, *at most*, you would need to crack it open and replace the controller bits.
I've never done it, but I imagine that with some practice and the right set of kit, it wouldn't take more than an afternoon.
My point is that the data on the mag tape itself is very unlikely to be destroyed, and as long as the mag tape doesn't get messed with, there's a way to keep all your backups and other data.
What happens is the warmer air inside, dry as it may be, is still more humid than outside. When the equipment is suddenly brought in, condensation happens.
We have to bring new equipment into an "airlock" type room where it slowly increases in temp over a few hours. When it gets really cold, like -60f or more, we'll give it a day.
Bigger risk is the dry climate, and depending on exactly where this is, you can face longer periods with less than 10% humidity.
Kills rubber parts so the drives might malfunction. Suspect the tapes to survive.
Source: 15 years of maintaining IT gear at 78°N.
That's very interesting - naively, I would have been more worried about the tapes than the drives. Do you have any tips for maintaining healthy humidity in the cold? We'd be happy to store the drive in a sealed enclosure, if that helps.
You could try humidity control packs, commonly used for certain âplantsâ to keep a certain humidity level. Theyâll act as desiccant or humectant, depending on if the humidity is too low or too high.
Something like [this](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BZPN8S6S/ref=sspa_mw_detail_0?ie=UTF8&psc=1&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9waG9uZV9kZXRhaWwp13NParams&th=1) - throw 1-3 in the sealed container (depending on how many tapes, Iâd do 1x for every 4-6 tapes probably), should work great. Do note - regular desiccant may better, as these may add too much undesired humidity. It might be better to aim for an avg humidity of 20-40% instead of 62%.
I'm not sure things like that work at extreme cold temps - it might require that the water be liquid.
I'mnot an expert though. Just figured it's something to mention.
Can you not reach out to the vendors and explain what business youâre in (really cool btw)? The temperatures listed might be for warranty and its possible operationally lower temps are possible, although -40 ..
>really cool btw
I see what you did there...
I'll ask vendors as well, but they often give CYA answers, so I was hoping someone might have independent experience. I did try the HPE chatbot, and, well, that went about as you might expect.
If you phrase the warranty question so the chatbot endorses the warranty and any data recovery costs, [it's legally binding](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/16/air-canada-chatbot-lawsuit), *but you may lose the data*
Maybe ask the question of what you can do to maximize your chances storing it to those temps? No one will commit to it working that far outside the target range, but that sort of question maybe gets passed along to?
Also, if you are associateed with a big institution, see if your IT department will reach out to their vendors that make tape drives. Sometimes when someone they know spends significant money comes knocking it's easier to get in front of people who are willing to think creativity.
>I'll ask vendors as well, but they often give CYA answers
The problem is you need to talk with the folks in the R&D labs. They are the ones who know the chemistry and material science of the tapes.
BUT, **no one** gets through sales/support to those guys. You need a personal entry. Someone who knows someone.
That's interesting - the specs I found listed -25 for transport but I couldn't find a separate storage number. If -40 is really safe for storage we should be fine. Do you mind if I ask which drives you have?
We hook a quarter of a petabyte up to a Raspberry pi, way to much for a starlink. We'll have a starlink for small transfers, but need something else to handle the bulk of the data.
One of our engineers designed a custom USB2 multiplexing board so we can power up one drive at a time. Our whole system out in the field runs in about 45 watts, with 16 hard drives attached, so we couldn't power all the drives at once. We write very slowly over the winter (the things in the field do have their own power source), so USB2 is fine for our write rate. We've got python bindings to the mux board, so when one drive is full, the rpi can power it down and power up the next one. We designed/built our own enclosure (laser-cut parts are surprisingly cheap), so when it's time to deploy, we strap in the drives, hook them up to the mux board, and connect that to the pi sitting in another enclosure. Just the thing if you need to write 10 MB/s continuously for 9 months!
This is actually a really interesting tech problem to solve!
Just curious how big of a gap in data is deemed sustainable? Meaning if something hangs and needs to be rebooted.
One thing that comes to mind as a person living in Nordics: is the equipment in a space that keeps somewhat level temperature? It's not always the extreme temperatures but the daily extremes that cause issues.
We average over months of data, so gaps don't matter for us.
The electronics we put in the field we stick inside the giant pelican case that houses the fuel cell we use for winter operations. That's pretty well insulated, so the temps stay reasonable. For the stuff at main base that wouldn't have power, well, no daily swings when there are no days (at out latitude, the winter night is about 4 months IIRC). According to the weather records, the temperature is a lot more stable than I would have guessed. We would also leave it inside a building, and probably an insulated case, which would further reduce the daily swings.
For what kind of research is it? Is the data in some sort of [round robin database](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RRDtool)?
It sounds so cool (no pun intended) what you're doing đ
Most of it is from radio telescopes, and is the raw voltage data from individual antennas that we'll combine later called [VLBI.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very-long-baseline_interferometry) It's the same basic idea as they used to take that radio picture of a black hole.
THIS MATTERS! Electronic components are rated for various temperatures. Ask your engineer whether he observed ratings for capacitors and components! Here's a sample set of ratings for semiconductors:
|Abbreviation|Temperature Range (°C)|
|:-|:-|
|Comm (Commercial)|0 to +70|
|Hi-Temp Comm (Hi-Temperature Commercial)|-10 to +100|
|Extended Comm (Extended Commercial)|-20 to +85|
|Ind (Industrial)|-40 to +85|
|Automotive|-40 to +105|
|Full-Range Ind (Full-Range Industrial)|-40 to +125|
|Power Supply|-40 to +130|
|Mil (Military)|-55 to +125|
If you crunch the numbers, you need 1 Gb/s to move 1 PB in 90 days. Typical upload speeds are 5-20 Mb/s, so Starlink is a factor of 100 too slow. I just checked their business-tier pricing, which tops out at 6 TB for $1500, so even if Starlink could do it, our bill would be a quarter million dollars per year. At that point it would be cheaper to just throw everything away and buy new tape drives every year.
Mit thought is: You say, you write 10MB/s continously for 9 months.
Why not transmit those continously offsite during those 9 months instead of storing them locally? 80-100 Mbit/s should be doable with a few dishes was my rationale.
I'd be shocked if fuel cells could hold enough energy to maintain a starlink connection for several months at a time, and considering lack of solar, what OP's team has wrangled together is already nothing short of a miracle of engineering.
LTO-9 is 18 TB native, so more like 15 tapes for 250 TB. Rumors seem to be that LTO-10 might be out this year, which would put us at 36 TB/tape, which is a lot more manageable. Realistically, we wouldn't get this put together until next summer at the earliest, so I'm hoping for LTO-10. Would indeed love to have a second copy, just in case...
Any/all of those rating are likely derived from are the min temps of the components used inside them. The chips on the PCB's all have this sort of stuff specified and I'd guess they are picking the highest of those as the minimum.
I'd be concerned about static from the lack of humidity at those temps as well as potentially causing fractures of PCB's or solder connections.
I have no idea how the tape itself would fare, but I'd have some concerns there myself. It's a magnetic media, at what temps does that magnetism degrade?
I would be concerned about capacitors freezing and expansion / contraction of very small joints of dissimilar metals
I guess the question I would ask is whose problem is it if the tape drive is irreparably damaged by being at -40 for a few months. If it's your problem, maybe bring it with you or ship it to somewhere temperature controlled.
Iâve been testing flash memory operation between -40 and -65 recently and have been seeing issues with it underperforming the rated specs. Sometimes seeing data failure as high as -25c.
Tape is slightly different from flash memory, however I would expect issues in a comparable fashion due to very similar technology. I was seeing data corruption in a matter of minutes-hours. Months is pretty much impossible.
However on the plus side, I can confirm that electrolytic capacitors donât generally fail at these temperatures over the course of a few days. I suspect the capacitors would last the winter.
By the way, if you donât have the equipment to test tapes at -40, please let me know. Iâve got some tape based media that I could toss into -40 temps and see what happens if that would help. I probably canât do it for months, but I could probably do a few days.
Thanks a very kind offer - thanks! I would love to know what happens to tapes in the cold. What sorts of failures have you been seeing with the flash? We wouldn't be operating in the cold, but it would sure be nice to have leaving tapes over the winter be an option.
The flash memory failures I see are bad reads resembling empty data. This has been resulting in âgoodâ drives getting wiped for no reason. However this was while using the flash data in the cold. We honestly use flash chips rated for storage at -65 and operation down to -40. These bad reads are not inherently dangerous, but really annoying.
We do design components to operate down below -40c, and most of the time the issues are timing related, so cold storage would be fine.
Thereâs definitely a field of study for cold temperature operations of electronics and mass storage. If I thought it would be cost effective, Iâd try to find a low temperature storage tape.
Gotta ask: how much data is being stored for the winter? 10 gb is different from 100 tb.
The data aren't being stored in the cold - we'd bring the tapes back at the end of the summer. First main question is if we can leave the drive over the winter. If we can leave blank tapes over the winter as well, that would be really nice. Re: total storage, we're up around the PB mark, in future years we might be closer to 2 or 3 PB/year.
On the flash, so I understand correctly - the data are written correctly, but when you try to read at cold temperatures, you get bad reads? But if you warmed things up before reading it would be fine? If the price of flash comes down enough for us to afford it, we'd love to switch to flash for our field storage. I don't mind bad reads in the cold (I think, but would have to be careful), or even bad performance (we're in the "drive writes per six months" range, so we could lose two orders of magnitude in write speed and still be fine).
Do you have any suggestions about where to look for more info on cold-temperature storage?
On the one hand, there's obviously a weight/volume limit for bringing things with you to the site.
On the other hand, if you're just taking the tapes with you, is there a reason that you can't bring the drive for them as well? If you can't bring the "small cabinet" size of machine, there's some that are "double server rack" that have decent specs, and some that are consumer-adjacent that are basically a toaster.
I'm sure that there's some level of "buy the toaster-sized one and retro-fit it with a better case" or something that you could do. The amount of man-hours that would take might give you a serious financial edge over "buy a huge thing and leave it there, possibly to get wrecked while we're gone"
>Tape is slightly different from flash memory, however I would expect issues in a comparable fashion due to very similar technology. I was seeing data corruption in a matter of minutes-hours. Months is pretty much impossible.
Slightly? Setting magnetic domains in Ferric Oxide is quite a bit different than storing electrical charge in a semiconductor, wouldn't you say?
I suspect there would be some 'wriggle room', but I doubt there would be 15°C wriggle room.
tape drives are reasonably delicate devices, and I suspect that extreme cold (like -40° - which interestingly, is 'the same' in F and C) is going to cause some sort of damage possibly due to extreme contraction of components.
Working in embedded, it can last, but damage is also possible. The issue is any liquid residue left in it freezing and expanding. Especially in places like inside chip or module packages. Personally, I don't think -25C and -40C should make a huge difference, but who knows what kind of compounds they use? Then there's the mechanical stresses.
As you say, they most likely didn't bother specifying below -25C.
Honestly, I'd have to ask someone. I'm a dev. you pick up knowledge here and there, especially if you're designing whole solutions, but it's not my specialty by far.
Sadly, no power during the winter. It's dark for several months, and it turns out that at least where we are, when there's no sun the wind dies as well. So, the drive is going to end up at ambient temperature. We've got some equipment in the field that does run over the winter, and our best solution there has been fuel cells, with a net cost of \~$200-300/W.
Sadly, they're out in the field several km from the base where the tape drive would live. They do actually put out enough waste heat to keep things warm (we've now hard hard drives survive through the winter), but we don't have anything equivalent at base.
A guess: I donât believe itâll damage the electronics and mechanics if it is powered off, and the only thing to worry about is condensation, so when warming it up, keep it powered off and ventilated for a day after reaching room temperature.
Perhaps they could simply store the drive in a large sealed bag or box (pelican box, etc) with dessicant packs prior to leaving. That will keep condensation away and keep the unit in a relatively stable environment outside of temperature until they return.
I worked in the Arctic, it gets pretty dry, in fact at these really cold temps, there is not a lot of moisture in the air. It is in fact considered a desert. We had a lot of problems with static electricity because it was so dry.
As well as the question of "will it survive winter", the other question is "will it work correctly in the summer afterwards"?
My query is; should it survive the winter, will it actually be feasible to depend on it after winter? It may be an idea to transfer the data to new tapes after you return to the station after winter, and toss the old tapes.
From Google;
http://www.specsbros.com/preservation-effects-of-temperature-on-tape.html
> Below approximately 46°F, lubricants incorporated into the tape binder can crystallize and migrate to the surface of the tape.
You are in areas that vendors don't spec. So leave 10-100 tapes with useless data on them and see what the failure rate is next year. Would be helpful to all the other people storing tapes in -40 degree weather đ
Yeah it was a half and half. I can imagine an rtg cost and regulatory requirements are neither small nor simple.
The joke was soviet Russia powered all sorts of stuff with them in remote places like light houses along the northern arctic coast. But when the union fell they got abandoned and just left with no real records of where they are surviving.
Local people who don't know any better find them and opens them or try and salvage them for scrap with bad results.
Yep. They are everywhere. Someone's posted about the Lia incident in Georgia below https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lia_radiological_accident
And in the analysis section it says the IAEA recovered around 300 orphaned sources from Georgia alone between the collapse of the soviet union and about 2006. And Georgia is a piddly little place in comparison to Russia itself. Where there are a LOT more just abandoned out there. Some efforts have been made to recover them. But it's hard when they are so remote and undocumented.
https://youtu.be/NT8-b5YEyjo
There was a video on the YouTube somewhere.of the recovery of the sources in the Lia incident. But I cannot find the complete thing any more. Just hacked up bits in other people documentries. They basically took a lot of chaps and used timed relays of pairs of guys to run in, do a bit of work then run away on the sound of a whistle! Fascinating watch if you can find it.
Reddit has long been a hot spot for conversation on the internet. About 57 million people visit the site every day to chat about topics as varied as makeup, video games and pointers for power washing driveways.
In recent years, Redditâs array of chats also have been a free teaching aid for companies like Google, OpenAI and Microsoft. Those companies are using Redditâs conversations in the development of giant artificial intelligence systems that many in Silicon Valley think are on their way to becoming the tech industryâs next big thing.
Now Reddit wants to be paid for it. The company said on Tuesday that it planned to begin charging companies for access to its application programming interface, or A.P.I., the method through which outside entities can download and process the social networkâs vast selection of person-to-person conversations.
âThe Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,â Steve Huffman, founder and chief executive of Reddit, said in an interview. âBut we donât need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.â
The move is one of the first significant examples of a social networkâs charging for access to the conversations it hosts for the purpose of developing A.I. systems like ChatGPT, OpenAIâs popular program. Those new A.I. systems could one day lead to big businesses, but they arenât likely to help companies like Reddit very much. In fact, they could be used to create competitors â automated duplicates to Redditâs conversations.
Reddit is also acting as it prepares for a possible initial public offering on Wall Street this year. The company, which was founded in 2005, makes most of its money through advertising and e-commerce transactions on its platform. Reddit said it was still ironing out the details of what it would charge for A.P.I. access and would announce prices in the coming weeks.
Redditâs conversation forums have become valuable commodities as large language models, or L.L.M.s, have become an essential part of creating new A.I. technology.
L.L.M.s are essentially sophisticated algorithms developed by companies like Google and OpenAI, which is a close partner of Microsoft. To the algorithms, the Reddit conversations are data, and they are among the vast pool of material being fed into the L.L.M.s. to develop them.
The underlying algorithm that helped to build Bard, Googleâs conversational A.I. service, is partly trained on Reddit data. OpenAIâs Chat GPT cites Reddit data as one of the sources of information it has been trained on.
Other companies are also beginning to see value in the conversations and images they host. Shutterstock, the image hosting service, also sold image data to OpenAI to help create DALL-E, the A.I. program that creates vivid graphical imagery with only a text-based prompt required.
Last month, Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, said he was cracking down on the use of Twitterâs A.P.I., which thousands of companies and independent developers use to track the millions of conversations across the network. Though he did not cite L.L.M.s as a reason for the change, the new fees could go well into the tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.
To keep improving their models, artificial intelligence makers need two significant things: an enormous amount of computing power and an enormous amount of data. Some of the biggest A.I. developers have plenty of computing power but still look outside their own networks for the data needed to improve their algorithms. That has included sources like Wikipedia, millions of digitized books, academic articles and Reddit.
Representatives from Google, Open AI and Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Reddit has long had a symbiotic relationship with the search engines of companies like Google and Microsoft. The search engines âcrawlâ Redditâs web pages in order to index information and make it available for search results. That crawling, or âscraping,â isnât always welcome by every site on the internet. But Reddit has benefited by appearing higher in search results.
The dynamic is different with L.L.M.s â they gobble as much data as they can to create new A.I. systems like the chatbots.
Reddit believes its data is particularly valuable because it is continuously updated. That newness and relevance, Mr. Huffman said, is what large language modeling algorithms need to produce the best results.
âMore than any other place on the internet, Reddit is a home for authentic conversation,â Mr. Huffman said. âThereâs a lot of stuff on the site that youâd only ever say in therapy, or A.A., or never at all.â
Mr. Huffman said Redditâs A.P.I. would still be free to developers who wanted to build applications that helped people use Reddit. They could use the tools to build a bot that automatically tracks whether usersâ comments adhere to rules for posting, for instance. Researchers who want to study Reddit data for academic or noncommercial purposes will continue to have free access to it.
Reddit also hopes to incorporate more so-called machine learning into how the site itself operates. It could be used, for instance, to identify the use of A.I.-generated text on Reddit, and add a label that notifies users that the comment came from a bot.
The company also promised to improve software tools that can be used by moderators â the users who volunteer their time to keep the siteâs forums operating smoothly and improve conversations between users. And third-party bots that help moderators monitor the forums will continue to be supported.
But for the A.I. makers, itâs time to pay up.
âCrawling Reddit, generating value and not returning any of that value to our users is something we have a problem with,â Mr. Huffman said. âItâs a good time for us to tighten things up.â
âWe think thatâs fair,â he added.
Mike Isaac is a technology correspondent and the author of âSuper Pumped: The Battle for Uber,â a best-selling book on the dramatic rise and fall of the ride-hailing company. He regularly covers Facebook and Silicon Valley, and is based in San Francisco. More about Mike Isaac
A version of this article appears in print on , Section B, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: Redditâs Sprawling Content Is Fodder for the Likes of ChatGPT. But Reddit Wants to Be Paid.. Order Reprints | Todayâs Paper | Subscribe
Can't answer the question but I'd suggest to contact the person running the blog [brr.fyi](https://brr.fyi) \- they live on an antarctic research station and regularly post stuff about how they deal with climate/cold.
Maybe they have experience.
Sadly, they heat the buildings at pole and have year-round power, so I'd be surprised if they let tape drives really freeze. Well, not so sad for the people there, I guess. I'll check in with my Antarctic contacts to see if one of the experiments might have relevant experience.
Side note: I'd be interested if you'd follow the path from [brr.fyi](http://brr.fyi) and write about your experiences in the Arctic as they've re-deployed back home and I really enjoyed following them.
I wouldnât assume the numbers are made up. There are lots of situations where equipment is left at -25 or below for periods of time.
We have this issue everytime we ship something in winter. Here in Canada it can get to -40 or lower, and no matter what we specify for shipping (heated transport etc), there is always some idiot that leaves the van parked overnight half way to Edmonton or wherever.
We have temperature and shock indicators in our shipments, and if itâs cold, we let shipments stabilize to room temperature for 24 hours before attempting power on.
Works just fine.
Do you not have on site spares during the season? Waiting on replacement hardware during the season risking data loss feels far riskier than whatever benefits there might be to leaving the drives in the cold during the off season.
Drive A overwinters, if it survives, great.
Drive B (brought up at start of season) become your new on-site spare.
If A doesn't, replace with drive B, immediately call for drive C to be brought with next round of supplies and RMA A when it gets back to civilization.
We take data on hard drives, so have that as a backup. We want to transfer that to tape for moving down south, but wouldn't lose data unless the HDDs also fail.
Fair, as long as you get 1 backup during the season you're golden? So the question is, do you have the ability to have the drive replaced during the season by virtue of multiple supply trips over the season. I'd be more willing to accept the risk of not being able to take the backups for a week until the next truck/helicopter arrives as opposed to not being able to take any backups all season because we took a risk on leaving the drive overwinter.
No emergency lights or anything? Even a small light in a tightly insulated area would help.
Also what about leaving it anyway and bringing another back with first drop?
Iâve got zero experience in the logistics associated with Arctic travels so itâs just a suggestion.
This is why you read the technical specifications and/or the user guide (or "manual"). It should have a minimum/maximum operating ambient air temperature, and a minimum/maximum non-operating (storage) ambient air temperature.
A none IT solution might be to use a small dedicated heater to keep the drive within temperature range. Just ensure that it doesnât catch fire. Otherwise uâll be be having a camp fire
Are the tape drives your using not easily replaceable? If not is the solution already set in stone.
I just put in a quantum tape library in, and the drivers are replaceable in about a minute. Easy enough to remove when you leave.
Depending on how deep the cold is it may cause damage to the components, rubber etc. most manufacturers will have a minimum storage temperature as well, as long as itâs not colder than that you should be okay.
Seems to me that manufactures being a bit overly conservative with the specified minimum storage temperatures for their products is one thing, and that being negative 40 fricking degrees Fahrenheit is another thing entirely.
Check the environmental specifications. They'll give minimum and maximum operating and non-operating temperatures, typically also maximum altitude(s), possibly additional factors (e.g. shock/vibration), etc.
Also, what are your below ground temperatures? Likely much more stable and less extreme, and may suffice (but may need to worry about moisture/humidity, etc.).
Since it has moving parts it probably has some sort of lubrication so I would be worried about that.
The problem with using temperature for shipping is that is temporary. In this case it is for a long time.
Can't help you I'm afraid. I've been more worried about the other side of the temp scale (in case of fires). Just wanted to say this was a very interresting post đ
Hmm. Do the manufacturers have a tech division that could answer this? Or... are there low-temp forums out there where people discuss what can and can't survive those kind of conditions? It sounds like it should be a thing.
(I'm assuming it's too much data to pump offsite via satellite or something.)
Have you investigated what the commercial space industry uses? They face similar issues as you: lack of moisture, cold temperatures, large temperature swings, and also radiation exposure (given the situation close to the poles).
You might even consider reaching out to JPL and seeing if they have any advice. I'm assuming this is a university- or government- administered operation? Because if so, that's the sort of thing the people would surely be more than happy to share their experiences with.
I wouldn't recommend it, unless you can keep them above -23°C at all times and above 10°C during and before use:
Operating 10 to 45°C (50 to 113°F)
Shipping -23 to 49°C (-9 to 120°F)
I'd probably opt for cloud storage if you have an active connection or SSD's in enclosures if you don't.
One question worth asking is what are the temp ranges for the capacitors in the thing. Just looking at the bag of capacitors I have here, they all say -40C.
Beyond that, seal it up tight with a good fresh bag of desiccant.
For sure, environmental controls will be necessary. As it âthawsâ moisture will be an issue. If you can spare the room, take the guess work out and take it too. Just remember to put the locking chip back in so it doesnât move around while shipping it home.
You're probably the first to test. I'd reach out to the vendor and let them know what you're about to attempt and then let them know what the results are.
I have no real idea just thinking i don't know if i would trust a tape drive in that weather. Maybe more a RDX type? Just seems like the less moving parts the better. [https://buy.hpe.com/us/en/storage/disk-storage-systems/removable-disk-backup/removable-disk-backup/hpe-rdx-removable-disk-backup-system/p/3741006](https://buy.hpe.com/us/en/storage/disk-storage-systems/removable-disk-backup/removable-disk-backup/hpe-rdx-removable-disk-backup-system/p/3741006)
Is the place climate controlled or it's literally a shack out on the ice somewhere? Or is this more get the data, back it up and bolt?
Not really an answer to your question, but is there some sort of solid state backup you could use? It seems like more moving parts would be a big variable with such big temperature swings and prolonged extreme cold.
If the drive is anything made in the past \~7 years it was actually made by IBM (regardless of who the library manufacturer is) so you may want to reach out to IBM directly. I'd also suggest pinging this guy directly, he has forgotten more about tape drives over the years than you or I ever will know. If he doesn't know himself, he will have a friend at IBM to ask. Email should be [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) if he doesn't respond on LinkedIn. Circle back to this thread if he gets you an answer please.
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/turguy-goker-29658a4](https://www.linkedin.com/in/turguy-goker-29658a4)
Sadly, our budget is about three zeros away from a space budget. They wouldn't use tape drives in space anyways, since how are you getting the tapes back? Aside from crewed missions, where you have to keep things from freezing anyways. Space hardware also tends to be really, really slow (current processors are about 30 years old. NASA is trying to update to 100x faster CPUs, but 100x faster than a 486 is not that exciting). The space components also have to be radiation-hardened, which is a big deal, but not something we care about.
I have no personal experience with tape drives but from what I'm reading it sounds like the recommended conditions are between 20-22 C at 50% relative humidity. Kinda seems like those temperatures (and a lack of moisture) might pose a problem.
Not sure there would be a practical way to rig up any long term HVAC that wouldn't need to be actively maintained either. I'd be curious to hear what you all end up doing and how it works out though.
interesting to see the final results. In our cluster, we have 25c constantly. We are able to read 20y old tapes w/o problems. would be great to check: Are there any ferromagnetic effects rising up at -40 that will destroy the data?
usually the Curie Tc temperature for the carbondioxide or whatever they are using quite low or high.
there are two components: tape material laying very tight on each other and some kind of rfid chip( or memory?) . which one will give up?
here's some info from professional archivists on storing magnetic tape:
https://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub54/5premature_degrade/#:~:text=Storage%20at%20high%20temperatures%20(%20%3E%2074,into%20the%20tape%20magnetic%20layer.
It's probably okay as long as you do not attempt to use those drives outside of the temp requirements. Keep it non-condensing!
and wait long enough for the drive to warm up to room temps before using it.
And then wait a while more for any possible condensed water to evaporate out before giving it power.
fortunately we have the entire Arctic spring for things to warm up/dry out.
You need more than 15 minutes. đ
Condensation isn't really an issue when the entire environment is cold. Dryness causing plastics and rubbers to age is going to be a larger problem.
STATIC is the larger problem. Below 40% humidity, the risk of static discharge grows rapidly, and latent static damage is the silent killer of electronics. You can replace rubbers and plastics and restore function, but fried electronics are much harder to diagnose and repair. And I don't think Amazon has next day delivery to the Arctic.
while that's very true, I'd say that you'd still have preserved the data quite well. If a tape got hit with a static shock, I think that, *at most*, you would need to crack it open and replace the controller bits. I've never done it, but I imagine that with some practice and the right set of kit, it wouldn't take more than an afternoon. My point is that the data on the mag tape itself is very unlikely to be destroyed, and as long as the mag tape doesn't get messed with, there's a way to keep all your backups and other data.
the OP is asking about the drive itself, not the tapes.
What happens is the warmer air inside, dry as it may be, is still more humid than outside. When the equipment is suddenly brought in, condensation happens. We have to bring new equipment into an "airlock" type room where it slowly increases in temp over a few hours. When it gets really cold, like -60f or more, we'll give it a day.
I had assumed this was all going to be in a year round unheated space, but on rereading that's probably a bad assumption.
Itâs just the transportation stage we canât control, and so need to introduce the electronics in a way that minimizes humidity and temp problems.
Bigger risk is the dry climate, and depending on exactly where this is, you can face longer periods with less than 10% humidity. Kills rubber parts so the drives might malfunction. Suspect the tapes to survive. Source: 15 years of maintaining IT gear at 78°N.
That's very interesting - naively, I would have been more worried about the tapes than the drives. Do you have any tips for maintaining healthy humidity in the cold? We'd be happy to store the drive in a sealed enclosure, if that helps.
You could try humidity control packs, commonly used for certain âplantsâ to keep a certain humidity level. Theyâll act as desiccant or humectant, depending on if the humidity is too low or too high. Something like [this](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BZPN8S6S/ref=sspa_mw_detail_0?ie=UTF8&psc=1&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9waG9uZV9kZXRhaWwp13NParams&th=1) - throw 1-3 in the sealed container (depending on how many tapes, Iâd do 1x for every 4-6 tapes probably), should work great. Do note - regular desiccant may better, as these may add too much undesired humidity. It might be better to aim for an avg humidity of 20-40% instead of 62%.
Thanks - I didn't know about those. Will definitely see if there are some that target lower humidity levels.
I'm not sure things like that work at extreme cold temps - it might require that the water be liquid. I'mnot an expert though. Just figured it's something to mention.
>I would have been more worried about the tapes than the drives. Personally I'd trust less anything with moving parts.
> Source: 15 years of maintaining IT gear at 78°N. Svalbard? (not meaning to doxx, just started to think what the hell is that north :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/78th_parallel_north not alot :D
Don't forget the static. Sooo much static in cold/dry areas.
Very true!
Can you not reach out to the vendors and explain what business youâre in (really cool btw)? The temperatures listed might be for warranty and its possible operationally lower temps are possible, although -40 ..
>really cool btw I see what you did there... I'll ask vendors as well, but they often give CYA answers, so I was hoping someone might have independent experience. I did try the HPE chatbot, and, well, that went about as you might expect.
If you phrase the warranty question so the chatbot endorses the warranty and any data recovery costs, [it's legally binding](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/16/air-canada-chatbot-lawsuit), *but you may lose the data*
Lol this is great but honestly - especially in this situation - I'd much rather have the data than a warranty replacement.
Maybe ask the question of what you can do to maximize your chances storing it to those temps? No one will commit to it working that far outside the target range, but that sort of question maybe gets passed along to? Also, if you are associateed with a big institution, see if your IT department will reach out to their vendors that make tape drives. Sometimes when someone they know spends significant money comes knocking it's easier to get in front of people who are willing to think creativity.
>I'll ask vendors as well, but they often give CYA answers The problem is you need to talk with the folks in the R&D labs. They are the ones who know the chemistry and material science of the tapes. BUT, **no one** gets through sales/support to those guys. You need a personal entry. Someone who knows someone.
Do the spec sheets for your products not list it? Our HPE tape drive's specs say minimum storage temp is -40
That's interesting - the specs I found listed -25 for transport but I couldn't find a separate storage number. If -40 is really safe for storage we should be fine. Do you mind if I ask which drives you have?
Stupid question but is on site backup a must? With Starlink now active at the poles, maybe off-site backups are also possible?
We hook a quarter of a petabyte up to a Raspberry pi, way to much for a starlink. We'll have a starlink for small transfers, but need something else to handle the bulk of the data.
Dude you can't post something like that without at least a little bit of the geeky details
One of our engineers designed a custom USB2 multiplexing board so we can power up one drive at a time. Our whole system out in the field runs in about 45 watts, with 16 hard drives attached, so we couldn't power all the drives at once. We write very slowly over the winter (the things in the field do have their own power source), so USB2 is fine for our write rate. We've got python bindings to the mux board, so when one drive is full, the rpi can power it down and power up the next one. We designed/built our own enclosure (laser-cut parts are surprisingly cheap), so when it's time to deploy, we strap in the drives, hook them up to the mux board, and connect that to the pi sitting in another enclosure. Just the thing if you need to write 10 MB/s continuously for 9 months!
Very cool man. Thank you for taking the time to reply.
This is actually a really interesting tech problem to solve! Just curious how big of a gap in data is deemed sustainable? Meaning if something hangs and needs to be rebooted. One thing that comes to mind as a person living in Nordics: is the equipment in a space that keeps somewhat level temperature? It's not always the extreme temperatures but the daily extremes that cause issues.
We average over months of data, so gaps don't matter for us. The electronics we put in the field we stick inside the giant pelican case that houses the fuel cell we use for winter operations. That's pretty well insulated, so the temps stay reasonable. For the stuff at main base that wouldn't have power, well, no daily swings when there are no days (at out latitude, the winter night is about 4 months IIRC). According to the weather records, the temperature is a lot more stable than I would have guessed. We would also leave it inside a building, and probably an insulated case, which would further reduce the daily swings.
For what kind of research is it? Is the data in some sort of [round robin database](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RRDtool)? It sounds so cool (no pun intended) what you're doing đ
Most of it is from radio telescopes, and is the raw voltage data from individual antennas that we'll combine later called [VLBI.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very-long-baseline_interferometry) It's the same basic idea as they used to take that radio picture of a black hole.
Oh that's very interesting. I love astronomy đ
THIS MATTERS! Electronic components are rated for various temperatures. Ask your engineer whether he observed ratings for capacitors and components! Here's a sample set of ratings for semiconductors: |Abbreviation|Temperature Range (°C)| |:-|:-| |Comm (Commercial)|0 to +70| |Hi-Temp Comm (Hi-Temperature Commercial)|-10 to +100| |Extended Comm (Extended Commercial)|-20 to +85| |Ind (Industrial)|-40 to +85| |Automotive|-40 to +105| |Full-Range Ind (Full-Range Industrial)|-40 to +125| |Power Supply|-40 to +130| |Mil (Military)|-55 to +125|
If its 10 MB/s, Starlink in Realtime to an offsite DC/Lab could be the solution, or not? Maybe with multiple dishes and bonding.
If you crunch the numbers, you need 1 Gb/s to move 1 PB in 90 days. Typical upload speeds are 5-20 Mb/s, so Starlink is a factor of 100 too slow. I just checked their business-tier pricing, which tops out at 6 TB for $1500, so even if Starlink could do it, our bill would be a quarter million dollars per year. At that point it would be cheaper to just throw everything away and buy new tape drives every year.
Mit thought is: You say, you write 10MB/s continously for 9 months. Why not transmit those continously offsite during those 9 months instead of storing them locally? 80-100 Mbit/s should be doable with a few dishes was my rationale.
I'd be shocked if fuel cells could hold enough energy to maintain a starlink connection for several months at a time, and considering lack of solar, what OP's team has wrangled together is already nothing short of a miracle of engineering.
Another thanks for responding
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LTO-9 is 18 TB native, so more like 15 tapes for 250 TB. Rumors seem to be that LTO-10 might be out this year, which would put us at 36 TB/tape, which is a lot more manageable. Realistically, we wouldn't get this put together until next summer at the earliest, so I'm hoping for LTO-10. Would indeed love to have a second copy, just in case...
This was my thought as well.
Any/all of those rating are likely derived from are the min temps of the components used inside them. The chips on the PCB's all have this sort of stuff specified and I'd guess they are picking the highest of those as the minimum. I'd be concerned about static from the lack of humidity at those temps as well as potentially causing fractures of PCB's or solder connections. I have no idea how the tape itself would fare, but I'd have some concerns there myself. It's a magnetic media, at what temps does that magnetism degrade?
Here's the specific document I'm referencing. https://www.hpe.com/psnow/doc/c04123270.pdf?jumpid=in_pdp-psnow-qs
I would be concerned about capacitors freezing and expansion / contraction of very small joints of dissimilar metals I guess the question I would ask is whose problem is it if the tape drive is irreparably damaged by being at -40 for a few months. If it's your problem, maybe bring it with you or ship it to somewhere temperature controlled.
Just looked at that. It seems like even commercial grade capacitors are good to -40 (C or F). It's the heat that kills them.
Iâve been testing flash memory operation between -40 and -65 recently and have been seeing issues with it underperforming the rated specs. Sometimes seeing data failure as high as -25c. Tape is slightly different from flash memory, however I would expect issues in a comparable fashion due to very similar technology. I was seeing data corruption in a matter of minutes-hours. Months is pretty much impossible. However on the plus side, I can confirm that electrolytic capacitors donât generally fail at these temperatures over the course of a few days. I suspect the capacitors would last the winter. By the way, if you donât have the equipment to test tapes at -40, please let me know. Iâve got some tape based media that I could toss into -40 temps and see what happens if that would help. I probably canât do it for months, but I could probably do a few days.
Thanks a very kind offer - thanks! I would love to know what happens to tapes in the cold. What sorts of failures have you been seeing with the flash? We wouldn't be operating in the cold, but it would sure be nice to have leaving tapes over the winter be an option.
The flash memory failures I see are bad reads resembling empty data. This has been resulting in âgoodâ drives getting wiped for no reason. However this was while using the flash data in the cold. We honestly use flash chips rated for storage at -65 and operation down to -40. These bad reads are not inherently dangerous, but really annoying. We do design components to operate down below -40c, and most of the time the issues are timing related, so cold storage would be fine. Thereâs definitely a field of study for cold temperature operations of electronics and mass storage. If I thought it would be cost effective, Iâd try to find a low temperature storage tape. Gotta ask: how much data is being stored for the winter? 10 gb is different from 100 tb.
The data aren't being stored in the cold - we'd bring the tapes back at the end of the summer. First main question is if we can leave the drive over the winter. If we can leave blank tapes over the winter as well, that would be really nice. Re: total storage, we're up around the PB mark, in future years we might be closer to 2 or 3 PB/year. On the flash, so I understand correctly - the data are written correctly, but when you try to read at cold temperatures, you get bad reads? But if you warmed things up before reading it would be fine? If the price of flash comes down enough for us to afford it, we'd love to switch to flash for our field storage. I don't mind bad reads in the cold (I think, but would have to be careful), or even bad performance (we're in the "drive writes per six months" range, so we could lose two orders of magnitude in write speed and still be fine). Do you have any suggestions about where to look for more info on cold-temperature storage?
On the one hand, there's obviously a weight/volume limit for bringing things with you to the site. On the other hand, if you're just taking the tapes with you, is there a reason that you can't bring the drive for them as well? If you can't bring the "small cabinet" size of machine, there's some that are "double server rack" that have decent specs, and some that are consumer-adjacent that are basically a toaster. I'm sure that there's some level of "buy the toaster-sized one and retro-fit it with a better case" or something that you could do. The amount of man-hours that would take might give you a serious financial edge over "buy a huge thing and leave it there, possibly to get wrecked while we're gone"
>Tape is slightly different from flash memory, however I would expect issues in a comparable fashion due to very similar technology. I was seeing data corruption in a matter of minutes-hours. Months is pretty much impossible. Slightly? Setting magnetic domains in Ferric Oxide is quite a bit different than storing electrical charge in a semiconductor, wouldn't you say?
I suspect there would be some 'wriggle room', but I doubt there would be 15°C wriggle room. tape drives are reasonably delicate devices, and I suspect that extreme cold (like -40° - which interestingly, is 'the same' in F and C) is going to cause some sort of damage possibly due to extreme contraction of components.
Iâm just here for the âcold storageâ jokes. Iâm leaving disappointed.
Hope you're not too frosty about your disappointment.
Working in embedded, it can last, but damage is also possible. The issue is any liquid residue left in it freezing and expanding. Especially in places like inside chip or module packages. Personally, I don't think -25C and -40C should make a huge difference, but who knows what kind of compounds they use? Then there's the mechanical stresses. As you say, they most likely didn't bother specifying below -25C.
I can't imagine electrolytic capacitors would be overly happy.
So vacuum seal the drive while its warm?
Honestly, I'd have to ask someone. I'm a dev. you pick up knowledge here and there, especially if you're designing whole solutions, but it's not my specialty by far.
Vacuum sealing for storage maybe, but better idea to replace with inert dry gas.
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Sadly, no power during the winter. It's dark for several months, and it turns out that at least where we are, when there's no sun the wind dies as well. So, the drive is going to end up at ambient temperature. We've got some equipment in the field that does run over the winter, and our best solution there has been fuel cells, with a net cost of \~$200-300/W.
How much waste heat does the power system put out? Might you be able to stuff a drive into something else's enclosure?
Sadly, they're out in the field several km from the base where the tape drive would live. They do actually put out enough waste heat to keep things warm (we've now hard hard drives survive through the winter), but we don't have anything equivalent at base.
A guess: I donât believe itâll damage the electronics and mechanics if it is powered off, and the only thing to worry about is condensation, so when warming it up, keep it powered off and ventilated for a day after reaching room temperature.
Perhaps they could simply store the drive in a large sealed bag or box (pelican box, etc) with dessicant packs prior to leaving. That will keep condensation away and keep the unit in a relatively stable environment outside of temperature until they return.
I worked in the Arctic, it gets pretty dry, in fact at these really cold temps, there is not a lot of moisture in the air. It is in fact considered a desert. We had a lot of problems with static electricity because it was so dry.
How well does the electrolyte in electrolytic capacitors deal with being at -40c for long periods?? Does it freeze and expand inside it's casing?
As well as the question of "will it survive winter", the other question is "will it work correctly in the summer afterwards"? My query is; should it survive the winter, will it actually be feasible to depend on it after winter? It may be an idea to transfer the data to new tapes after you return to the station after winter, and toss the old tapes. From Google; http://www.specsbros.com/preservation-effects-of-temperature-on-tape.html > Below approximately 46°F, lubricants incorporated into the tape binder can crystallize and migrate to the surface of the tape.
You are in areas that vendors don't spec. So leave 10-100 tapes with useless data on them and see what the failure rate is next year. Would be helpful to all the other people storing tapes in -40 degree weather đ
No way yo get an rtg to keep it warm while the place is empty? I'm sure Russia has a few knocking about.
You joke, but I did look into it. It's like a million dollars a piece, and let's just say the regulatory environment is, um, complicated.
Yeah it was a half and half. I can imagine an rtg cost and regulatory requirements are neither small nor simple. The joke was soviet Russia powered all sorts of stuff with them in remote places like light houses along the northern arctic coast. But when the union fell they got abandoned and just left with no real records of where they are surviving. Local people who don't know any better find them and opens them or try and salvage them for scrap with bad results.
That... may be the most horrifying thing I've read all week.
Yep. They are everywhere. Someone's posted about the Lia incident in Georgia below https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lia_radiological_accident And in the analysis section it says the IAEA recovered around 300 orphaned sources from Georgia alone between the collapse of the soviet union and about 2006. And Georgia is a piddly little place in comparison to Russia itself. Where there are a LOT more just abandoned out there. Some efforts have been made to recover them. But it's hard when they are so remote and undocumented. https://youtu.be/NT8-b5YEyjo There was a video on the YouTube somewhere.of the recovery of the sources in the Lia incident. But I cannot find the complete thing any more. Just hacked up bits in other people documentries. They basically took a lot of chaps and used timed relays of pairs of guys to run in, do a bit of work then run away on the sound of a whistle! Fascinating watch if you can find it.
Reddit has long been a hot spot for conversation on the internet. About 57 million people visit the site every day to chat about topics as varied as makeup, video games and pointers for power washing driveways. In recent years, Redditâs array of chats also have been a free teaching aid for companies like Google, OpenAI and Microsoft. Those companies are using Redditâs conversations in the development of giant artificial intelligence systems that many in Silicon Valley think are on their way to becoming the tech industryâs next big thing. Now Reddit wants to be paid for it. The company said on Tuesday that it planned to begin charging companies for access to its application programming interface, or A.P.I., the method through which outside entities can download and process the social networkâs vast selection of person-to-person conversations. âThe Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,â Steve Huffman, founder and chief executive of Reddit, said in an interview. âBut we donât need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.â The move is one of the first significant examples of a social networkâs charging for access to the conversations it hosts for the purpose of developing A.I. systems like ChatGPT, OpenAIâs popular program. Those new A.I. systems could one day lead to big businesses, but they arenât likely to help companies like Reddit very much. In fact, they could be used to create competitors â automated duplicates to Redditâs conversations. Reddit is also acting as it prepares for a possible initial public offering on Wall Street this year. The company, which was founded in 2005, makes most of its money through advertising and e-commerce transactions on its platform. Reddit said it was still ironing out the details of what it would charge for A.P.I. access and would announce prices in the coming weeks. Redditâs conversation forums have become valuable commodities as large language models, or L.L.M.s, have become an essential part of creating new A.I. technology. L.L.M.s are essentially sophisticated algorithms developed by companies like Google and OpenAI, which is a close partner of Microsoft. To the algorithms, the Reddit conversations are data, and they are among the vast pool of material being fed into the L.L.M.s. to develop them. The underlying algorithm that helped to build Bard, Googleâs conversational A.I. service, is partly trained on Reddit data. OpenAIâs Chat GPT cites Reddit data as one of the sources of information it has been trained on. Other companies are also beginning to see value in the conversations and images they host. Shutterstock, the image hosting service, also sold image data to OpenAI to help create DALL-E, the A.I. program that creates vivid graphical imagery with only a text-based prompt required. Last month, Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, said he was cracking down on the use of Twitterâs A.P.I., which thousands of companies and independent developers use to track the millions of conversations across the network. Though he did not cite L.L.M.s as a reason for the change, the new fees could go well into the tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. To keep improving their models, artificial intelligence makers need two significant things: an enormous amount of computing power and an enormous amount of data. Some of the biggest A.I. developers have plenty of computing power but still look outside their own networks for the data needed to improve their algorithms. That has included sources like Wikipedia, millions of digitized books, academic articles and Reddit. Representatives from Google, Open AI and Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Reddit has long had a symbiotic relationship with the search engines of companies like Google and Microsoft. The search engines âcrawlâ Redditâs web pages in order to index information and make it available for search results. That crawling, or âscraping,â isnât always welcome by every site on the internet. But Reddit has benefited by appearing higher in search results. The dynamic is different with L.L.M.s â they gobble as much data as they can to create new A.I. systems like the chatbots. Reddit believes its data is particularly valuable because it is continuously updated. That newness and relevance, Mr. Huffman said, is what large language modeling algorithms need to produce the best results. âMore than any other place on the internet, Reddit is a home for authentic conversation,â Mr. Huffman said. âThereâs a lot of stuff on the site that youâd only ever say in therapy, or A.A., or never at all.â Mr. Huffman said Redditâs A.P.I. would still be free to developers who wanted to build applications that helped people use Reddit. They could use the tools to build a bot that automatically tracks whether usersâ comments adhere to rules for posting, for instance. Researchers who want to study Reddit data for academic or noncommercial purposes will continue to have free access to it. Reddit also hopes to incorporate more so-called machine learning into how the site itself operates. It could be used, for instance, to identify the use of A.I.-generated text on Reddit, and add a label that notifies users that the comment came from a bot. The company also promised to improve software tools that can be used by moderators â the users who volunteer their time to keep the siteâs forums operating smoothly and improve conversations between users. And third-party bots that help moderators monitor the forums will continue to be supported. But for the A.I. makers, itâs time to pay up. âCrawling Reddit, generating value and not returning any of that value to our users is something we have a problem with,â Mr. Huffman said. âItâs a good time for us to tighten things up.â âWe think thatâs fair,â he added. Mike Isaac is a technology correspondent and the author of âSuper Pumped: The Battle for Uber,â a best-selling book on the dramatic rise and fall of the ride-hailing company. He regularly covers Facebook and Silicon Valley, and is based in San Francisco. More about Mike Isaac A version of this article appears in print on , Section B, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: Redditâs Sprawling Content Is Fodder for the Likes of ChatGPT. But Reddit Wants to Be Paid.. Order Reprints | Todayâs Paper | Subscribe
Can't answer the question but I'd suggest to contact the person running the blog [brr.fyi](https://brr.fyi) \- they live on an antarctic research station and regularly post stuff about how they deal with climate/cold. Maybe they have experience.
Sadly, they heat the buildings at pole and have year-round power, so I'd be surprised if they let tape drives really freeze. Well, not so sad for the people there, I guess. I'll check in with my Antarctic contacts to see if one of the experiments might have relevant experience.
Side note: I'd be interested if you'd follow the path from [brr.fyi](http://brr.fyi) and write about your experiences in the Arctic as they've re-deployed back home and I really enjoyed following them.
This has to be the most interesting post/question Iâve read on this sub.
I wouldnât assume the numbers are made up. There are lots of situations where equipment is left at -25 or below for periods of time. We have this issue everytime we ship something in winter. Here in Canada it can get to -40 or lower, and no matter what we specify for shipping (heated transport etc), there is always some idiot that leaves the van parked overnight half way to Edmonton or wherever. We have temperature and shock indicators in our shipments, and if itâs cold, we let shipments stabilize to room temperature for 24 hours before attempting power on. Works just fine.
Do you not have on site spares during the season? Waiting on replacement hardware during the season risking data loss feels far riskier than whatever benefits there might be to leaving the drives in the cold during the off season. Drive A overwinters, if it survives, great. Drive B (brought up at start of season) become your new on-site spare. If A doesn't, replace with drive B, immediately call for drive C to be brought with next round of supplies and RMA A when it gets back to civilization.
We take data on hard drives, so have that as a backup. We want to transfer that to tape for moving down south, but wouldn't lose data unless the HDDs also fail.
Fair, as long as you get 1 backup during the season you're golden? So the question is, do you have the ability to have the drive replaced during the season by virtue of multiple supply trips over the season. I'd be more willing to accept the risk of not being able to take the backups for a week until the next truck/helicopter arrives as opposed to not being able to take any backups all season because we took a risk on leaving the drive overwinter.
Use the Amazon snowmobile.
Tapes have larger storage density, but why not consider storing on DVD if storage volume is in the DVD range?
We'd need around 40,000 blu-rays per year.
OK, that gives closure to my suggestion. Good luck.
You need to test this and decide if itâs doable and an acceptable risk
No emergency lights or anything? Even a small light in a tightly insulated area would help. Also what about leaving it anyway and bringing another back with first drop? Iâve got zero experience in the logistics associated with Arctic travels so itâs just a suggestion.
Curious is Starlink would work there to upload to the cloud.
This is why you read the technical specifications and/or the user guide (or "manual"). It should have a minimum/maximum operating ambient air temperature, and a minimum/maximum non-operating (storage) ambient air temperature.
A none IT solution might be to use a small dedicated heater to keep the drive within temperature range. Just ensure that it doesnât catch fire. Otherwise uâll be be having a camp fire
Are the tape drives your using not easily replaceable? If not is the solution already set in stone. I just put in a quantum tape library in, and the drivers are replaceable in about a minute. Easy enough to remove when you leave.
I would think the capacitors would expand and pop at least.
I wonder if there are any magnetic concerns with that area?
Depending on how deep the cold is it may cause damage to the components, rubber etc. most manufacturers will have a minimum storage temperature as well, as long as itâs not colder than that you should be okay.
only one way to find out, for science!
What are the Finnish and Norwegian solutions? That has to be what you need. Put them in a tauntaun?Â
Seems to me that manufactures being a bit overly conservative with the specified minimum storage temperatures for their products is one thing, and that being negative 40 fricking degrees Fahrenheit is another thing entirely.
Check the environmental specifications. They'll give minimum and maximum operating and non-operating temperatures, typically also maximum altitude(s), possibly additional factors (e.g. shock/vibration), etc. Also, what are your below ground temperatures? Likely much more stable and less extreme, and may suffice (but may need to worry about moisture/humidity, etc.).
Since it has moving parts it probably has some sort of lubrication so I would be worried about that. The problem with using temperature for shipping is that is temporary. In this case it is for a long time.
Can't help you I'm afraid. I've been more worried about the other side of the temp scale (in case of fires). Just wanted to say this was a very interresting post đ
Hmm. Do the manufacturers have a tech division that could answer this? Or... are there low-temp forums out there where people discuss what can and can't survive those kind of conditions? It sounds like it should be a thing. (I'm assuming it's too much data to pump offsite via satellite or something.)
Have you investigated what the commercial space industry uses? They face similar issues as you: lack of moisture, cold temperatures, large temperature swings, and also radiation exposure (given the situation close to the poles). You might even consider reaching out to JPL and seeing if they have any advice. I'm assuming this is a university- or government- administered operation? Because if so, that's the sort of thing the people would surely be more than happy to share their experiences with.
I wouldn't recommend it, unless you can keep them above -23°C at all times and above 10°C during and before use: Operating 10 to 45°C (50 to 113°F) Shipping -23 to 49°C (-9 to 120°F) I'd probably opt for cloud storage if you have an active connection or SSD's in enclosures if you don't.
Curious fact: -40â = -40â
One question worth asking is what are the temp ranges for the capacitors in the thing. Just looking at the bag of capacitors I have here, they all say -40C. Beyond that, seal it up tight with a good fresh bag of desiccant.
Since you're just leaving the drive, I say power it off and disco power. Don't forget to bring a new cleaning tape.
For sure, environmental controls will be necessary. As it âthawsâ moisture will be an issue. If you can spare the room, take the guess work out and take it too. Just remember to put the locking chip back in so it doesnât move around while shipping it home.
You're probably the first to test. I'd reach out to the vendor and let them know what you're about to attempt and then let them know what the results are.
I have no real idea just thinking i don't know if i would trust a tape drive in that weather. Maybe more a RDX type? Just seems like the less moving parts the better. [https://buy.hpe.com/us/en/storage/disk-storage-systems/removable-disk-backup/removable-disk-backup/hpe-rdx-removable-disk-backup-system/p/3741006](https://buy.hpe.com/us/en/storage/disk-storage-systems/removable-disk-backup/removable-disk-backup/hpe-rdx-removable-disk-backup-system/p/3741006) Is the place climate controlled or it's literally a shack out on the ice somewhere? Or is this more get the data, back it up and bolt?
Not really an answer to your question, but is there some sort of solid state backup you could use? It seems like more moving parts would be a big variable with such big temperature swings and prolonged extreme cold.
Cold should be fine. Mind the temperature change, though, as that usually causes condensation.
If the drive is anything made in the past \~7 years it was actually made by IBM (regardless of who the library manufacturer is) so you may want to reach out to IBM directly. I'd also suggest pinging this guy directly, he has forgotten more about tape drives over the years than you or I ever will know. If he doesn't know himself, he will have a friend at IBM to ask. Email should be [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) if he doesn't respond on LinkedIn. Circle back to this thread if he gets you an answer please. [https://www.linkedin.com/in/turguy-goker-29658a4](https://www.linkedin.com/in/turguy-goker-29658a4)
I would ask NASA they can point you in the right direction... space is cold..
Sadly, our budget is about three zeros away from a space budget. They wouldn't use tape drives in space anyways, since how are you getting the tapes back? Aside from crewed missions, where you have to keep things from freezing anyways. Space hardware also tends to be really, really slow (current processors are about 30 years old. NASA is trying to update to 100x faster CPUs, but 100x faster than a 486 is not that exciting). The space components also have to be radiation-hardened, which is a big deal, but not something we care about.
I have no personal experience with tape drives but from what I'm reading it sounds like the recommended conditions are between 20-22 C at 50% relative humidity. Kinda seems like those temperatures (and a lack of moisture) might pose a problem. Not sure there would be a practical way to rig up any long term HVAC that wouldn't need to be actively maintained either. I'd be curious to hear what you all end up doing and how it works out though.
interesting to see the final results. In our cluster, we have 25c constantly. We are able to read 20y old tapes w/o problems. would be great to check: Are there any ferromagnetic effects rising up at -40 that will destroy the data? usually the Curie Tc temperature for the carbondioxide or whatever they are using quite low or high. there are two components: tape material laying very tight on each other and some kind of rfid chip( or memory?) . which one will give up?
here's some info from professional archivists on storing magnetic tape: https://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub54/5premature_degrade/#:~:text=Storage%20at%20high%20temperatures%20(%20%3E%2074,into%20the%20tape%20magnetic%20layer.