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Can hard drives store long term like LTO tapes?

by pkaye 7y ago

kalleboo 7y ago
The article (which is obviously biased keep in mind) makes the argument that even LTO isn't really long term due to compatibility issues between tape generations - you have to keep migrating your tapes since new machines can't read older tape densities.
- dfrage 7y ago
  Realistically, companies keep making older generation tape drives for a long time, for example, HP LTO-5 drives are still widely available from normal vendors like Newegg. And except for one discontinuity that's pretty clearly due to the change from metal particulate to BaFe, which is at the heart of this patent dispute, LTO offers two generation back read capability, and one generation back write capability: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_Tape-Open#Compatibility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_Tape-Open#Compatibility
shakna 7y ago
Backblaze use hard drives, and there system seems to be incredibly fault tolerant and long lasting.
PaulHoule 7y ago
I have read external hard drives that sat unused for 15 years. Hypothetically the bearings might dry out or something but I haven't seen one fail. One the other hand I have chronically had problems with tapes I couldn't read, had spots of data corruption, or that took 18 hours to restore a 1500 byte file. Part of it is that the use of tapes is less routine so it is a common mistake to think you wrote a good tape but you didn't check it and it's unreadable. Another competitor for LTO tapes is BD-XL, which is more expensive per unit TB but the drives are cheaper.
- dfrage 7y ago
  What generation of tape technology exhibited the problems you describe? I've never suffered such problems with original 1/2 mag tapes, DDS, or LTO. BD-XL is wildly more expensive than LTO, although that won't matter if you can't get LTO to be reliable for you. Just checking now, B & H Photo which tends to have good prices and a good supply chain, $54.57 for 10 100GB BD-XL or a terabyte (https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1101544-REG/verbatim_98897_bd_r_xl_100g_inkjet.html https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1101544-REG/verbatim_...), not so cutting edge and still with competition LTO-6 from Fujifilm, quantity 20, $11/TB (https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1096090-REG/fujifilm_16310744_lto_ultrium_6_data.html https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1096090-REG/fujifilm_...). We also have a problem with no one worth trusting making cheapest single level BDR discs, the least worst is CMC, and I wonder how long before BD-XL sufferer the same problem.

Can hard drives store long term like LTO tapes?

by pkaye 7y ago

Can hard drives store long term like LTO tapes?

The article (which is obviously biased keep in mind) makes the argument that even LTO isn't really long term due to compatibility issues between tape generations - you have to keep migrating your tapes since new machines can't read older tape densities.

dfrage 7y ago
Realistically, companies keep making older generation tape drives for a long time, for example, HP LTO-5 drives are still widely available from normal vendors like Newegg. And except for one discontinuity that's pretty clearly due to the change from metal particulate to BaFe, which is at the heart of this patent dispute, LTO offers two generation back read capability, and one generation back write capability: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_Tape-Open#Compatibility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_Tape-Open#Compatibility

shakna 7y ago

Backblaze use hard drives, and there system seems to be incredibly fault tolerant and long lasting.

PaulHoule 7y ago

I have read external hard drives that sat unused for 15 years. Hypothetically the bearings might dry out or something but I haven't seen one fail. One the other hand I have chronically had problems with tapes I couldn't read, had spots of data corruption, or that took 18 hours to restore a 1500 byte file. Part of it is that the use of tapes is less routine so it is a common mistake to think you wrote a good tape but you didn't check it and it's unreadable. Another competitor for LTO tapes is BD-XL, which is more expensive per unit TB but the drives are cheaper.

dfrage 7y ago
What generation of tape technology exhibited the problems you describe? I've never suffered such problems with original 1/2 mag tapes, DDS, or LTO. BD-XL is wildly more expensive than LTO, although that won't matter if you can't get LTO to be reliable for you. Just checking now, B & H Photo which tends to have good prices and a good supply chain, $54.57 for 10 100GB BD-XL or a terabyte (https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1101544-REG/verbatim_98897_bd_r_xl_100g_inkjet.html https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1101544-REG/verbatim_...), not so cutting edge and still with competition LTO-6 from Fujifilm, quantity 20, $11/TB (https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1096090-REG/fujifilm_16310744_lto_ultrium_6_data.html https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1096090-REG/fujifilm_...). We also have a problem with no one worth trusting making cheapest single level BDR discs, the least worst is CMC, and I wonder how long before BD-XL sufferer the same problem.