5 ms·

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vQmTZTq7nw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vQmTZTq7nw "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes bar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vQmTZTq7nw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vQmTZTq7nw "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes barreling down the highway at 70mph."

Animats 9y ago
Have you ever tried to read a thousand tapes? Weeks. I was once involved in a project to copy old Stanford SAIL backup tapes. They just needed people to load tapes on a drive, wait, unload, and go on to the next tape. Reading a tape took 20 minutes. Transfer time over the Internet to a file server took under a minute.
- skj 9y ago
  I think we can update the story to include a stack of usb-accessed petabyte drives.
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    Or Amazon's purpose build hardware/services. https://aws.amazon.com/snowball/ https://aws.amazon.com/snowball/ https://aws.amazon.com/snowmobile/ https://aws.amazon.com/snowmobile/
    - thesandlord 9y ago
      Google: https://cloud.google.com/transfer-appliance/ https://cloud.google.com/transfer-appliance/ Microsoft: https://azure.microsoft.com/services/storage/databox/ https://azure.microsoft.com/services/storage/databox/
      - digi_owl 9y ago
        Interesting how similar the Amazon and Microsoft offerings are, while Google's seems more like just another rack unit aimed at sitting at the customer for an extended period.
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  I haven't, but I'd like to. Anyone who's reading a thousand tapes nowadays must be doing something interesting. :) Well, probably. There was a stack of floppy disks sitting on a shelf in an old thrift store. I couldn't help but buy it for $1. What could they contain? They're sitting on my desk right now. I still haven't bought a floppy disk reader, but I'm really curious. I assume a USB floppy disk drive + linux will be enough to dump the raw bytes, but I haven't looked into it. Spelunking around old tech is fascinating for unknown reasons.
  - marak830 9y ago
    Good luck pulling off any usable data, I still remember going through over 100 flopies as a teenager looking for files I had backedup and seeing so many damn read errors. Although now I'm interested to know what's on those disks you have :-p
    - sillysaurus3 9y ago
      The six disks say: Lotus 2/22/93 Lazarus, (formatted) WP LAZ6 Backup 13 Backup 12 Backup 11 All the backup discs are scratched out with pen though. I hope they didn't wipe them!
      - marak830 9y ago
        I wonder if lotus still works, and if those backups are sequental. Good luck getting the data!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vQmTZTq7nw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vQmTZTq7nw "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes barreling down the highway at 70mph."

Animats 9y ago

Have you ever tried to read a thousand tapes? Weeks. I was once involved in a project to copy old Stanford SAIL backup tapes. They just needed people to load tapes on a drive, wait, unload, and go on to the next tape. Reading a tape took 20 minutes. Transfer time over the Internet to a file server took under a minute.

skj 9y ago
I think we can update the story to include a stack of usb-accessed petabyte drives.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Or Amazon's purpose build hardware/services. https://aws.amazon.com/snowball/ https://aws.amazon.com/snowball/ https://aws.amazon.com/snowmobile/ https://aws.amazon.com/snowmobile/
  - thesandlord 9y ago
    Google: https://cloud.google.com/transfer-appliance/ https://cloud.google.com/transfer-appliance/ Microsoft: https://azure.microsoft.com/services/storage/databox/ https://azure.microsoft.com/services/storage/databox/
    - digi_owl 9y ago
      Interesting how similar the Amazon and Microsoft offerings are, while Google's seems more like just another rack unit aimed at sitting at the customer for an extended period.
sillysaurus3 9y ago
I haven't, but I'd like to. Anyone who's reading a thousand tapes nowadays must be doing something interesting. :) Well, probably. There was a stack of floppy disks sitting on a shelf in an old thrift store. I couldn't help but buy it for $1. What could they contain? They're sitting on my desk right now. I still haven't bought a floppy disk reader, but I'm really curious. I assume a USB floppy disk drive + linux will be enough to dump the raw bytes, but I haven't looked into it. Spelunking around old tech is fascinating for unknown reasons.
- marak830 9y ago
  Good luck pulling off any usable data, I still remember going through over 100 flopies as a teenager looking for files I had backedup and seeing so many damn read errors. Although now I'm interested to know what's on those disks you have :-p
  - sillysaurus3 9y ago
    The six disks say: Lotus 2/22/93 Lazarus, (formatted) WP LAZ6 Backup 13 Backup 12 Backup 11 All the backup discs are scratched out with pen though. I hope they didn't wipe them!
    - marak830 9y ago
      I wonder if lotus still works, and if those backups are sequental. Good luck getting the data!