What is the Remote Storage System (RSS)?

A. The remote storage system is new to Windows 2000 and addresses theproblem of limited disk space.

Prices of hard disks has fallen recently however tape is still much cheaperat around $20 for 8GB than hard drive space but is obviously slower access.Windows 2000 introduces a hierarchical storage management facility (from SeagateSoftware) that allows an NTFS 5 volume to be expanded by moving less used filesto tape while leaving a placeholder on the disk so users can still"see" the file. When the user tries to access one of these files thathas been moved to tape it is restored from the tape and opened in a read-onlymode. The process is almost invisible to the user, all the user sees is a smalldialog informing them the file is being restored from tape.

Remote Storage is also known as Hierarchical Storage Management (or HSM) asit allows two tiers of data storage, the first being the hard disk, the secondthe data moved to tape.

The files original size will still be displayed however it will not be usedwhen free space is calculated on the disk.

Programs need to be remote storage aware, especially backup and anti-virussoftware or it may attempt to fetch files from remote storage causing longdelays and also you may WANT files to be fetched from remote storage for fullbackups. The NTBACKUP software package supplied with Windows 2000 has fullsupport for remote storage and can also backup files stored on remote storage ifyou require. Be especially careful of FindFast supplied with Office 97 anddisable it!

You must have local Administrator rights to configure Remote Storage andcurrently as off Windows 2000 first release have a 4mm/8mm dat or DLT drive. Thevolumes must also be NTFS 5.0. In the future media such as ZIP or JAZ may be supportedbut not at present. Also the dat/DLT drive should be on the HCL however Ipurchased a HP DAT8i for the test which is not on HCL but had no problems. I'mnot encouraging you to use hardware not on the Windows 2000 HCL, I'm just sayingif its a standard dat/DLT type it will probably be OK and worth a try. Non-dat/DLTmedia will NOT work, I tried a Travan drive which it refused to use.