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> Current LTO-4 and LTO-5 tapes [...] go for $22-23, uncompressed capacities are 800 and 1.5 GB respectively. I think you meant 1.5TB. However, why not just u

> Current LTO-4 and LTO-5 tapes [...] go for $22-23, uncompressed capacities are 800 and 1.5 GB respectively. I think you meant 1.5TB. However, why not just use hard disk drives at just over twice that price? You'd get quite a lot of them for the cost of the tape drive.

hga 11y ago
Because tapes are much less fragile than hard disks, and I can stash a bunch of tapes in my safe deposit box and other places. As well as have many copies of my data as I keep monthly full backups for at least a year. And, hmmm, my tapes as I use them are more reliable than my Seagate enterprise disks, and that's with the latter not moving around (i.e. in all my post-mid-2011 tornado hardware, I've had two disk failures and no tape failures). For the level of data security I want, and the tiny AT&T DSL straw I'm currently forced to use, even with things like Amazon Snowball and ever lower prices on "nearline" cloud storage, if a tape drive lasts long enough, the numbers work better for tape. And compared to the usual enterprise, I don't beat up on tape drives, they're over-engineered for my duty cycle. I also have a desire to be able to make due without monthly charges, which a cloud solution doesn't allow. And, yeah, TB not GB. The DAT tapes I used previously were in the GB range as I vaguely recall.
- pixl97 11y ago
  >Because tapes are much less fragile than hard disks, In 'single serve server' configurations, such as small businesses, tapes work well because administrative rather than technical staff can replace the tapes daily reducing costs. If the tape is ejected then the user knows it safe to put the next tape in. If there is a failure the software itself can notify a systems administrator. With hard drives a non technical user has no idea if the disk is still mounted and live, leading to corruption issues if it is removed.
  - hga 11y ago
    And even more fragile if still spinning ... yeah, it would never occur to me to have anyone but trusted technical staff physically swapping hard disks around. Whereas I think people, at least us older types who used VHS tapes especially, have an idea for how tough/fragile computer backup tapes are (maybe a little tougher than a VHS tape, but not enough to make a difference in how you handle it). (We'll ignore for the moment that I never trusted anyone but myself to run the backup system and mount and unmount tapes, with one exception. :-)

hga 11y ago

Because tapes are much less fragile than hard disks, and I can stash a bunch of tapes in my safe deposit box and other places. As well as have many copies of my data as I keep monthly full backups for at least a year. And, hmmm, my tapes as I use them are more reliable than my Seagate enterprise disks, and that's with the latter not moving around (i.e. in all my post-mid-2011 tornado hardware, I've had two disk failures and no tape failures). For the level of data security I want, and the tiny AT&T DSL straw I'm currently forced to use, even with things like Amazon Snowball and ever lower prices on "nearline" cloud storage, if a tape drive lasts long enough, the numbers work better for tape. And compared to the usual enterprise, I don't beat up on tape drives, they're over-engineered for my duty cycle. I also have a desire to be able to make due without monthly charges, which a cloud solution doesn't allow. And, yeah, TB not GB. The DAT tapes I used previously were in the GB range as I vaguely recall.

pixl97 11y ago
>Because tapes are much less fragile than hard disks, In 'single serve server' configurations, such as small businesses, tapes work well because administrative rather than technical staff can replace the tapes daily reducing costs. If the tape is ejected then the user knows it safe to put the next tape in. If there is a failure the software itself can notify a systems administrator. With hard drives a non technical user has no idea if the disk is still mounted and live, leading to corruption issues if it is removed.
- hga 11y ago
  And even more fragile if still spinning ... yeah, it would never occur to me to have anyone but trusted technical staff physically swapping hard disks around. Whereas I think people, at least us older types who used VHS tapes especially, have an idea for how tough/fragile computer backup tapes are (maybe a little tougher than a VHS tape, but not enough to make a difference in how you handle it). (We'll ignore for the moment that I never trusted anyone but myself to run the backup system and mount and unmount tapes, with one exception. :-)