4 ms·
LTO turns out to be garbage on the key measure of "can I read my backups a little while down the road", because you'd be surprised how quickly a new LTO drive c
by rodgerd 7y ago
LTO turns out to be garbage on the key measure of "can I read my backups a little while down the road", because you'd be surprised how quickly a new LTO drive can't read old tapes.
It's unpleasant having to buy old drives to keep with your tape archives because you won't otherwise be able to read them any more.
- liability 7y agoCan't you just keep the old drives you wrote the old tapes with?
- rodgerd 7y agoUntil they break. Then you can't get a new one. Source: have done this at scale, have spent time scouring the second-hand market to cobble together early-generation LTO drives.
- liability 7y agoAlways buy two I guess. That messes with the affordability calculus though.
- protomyth 7y agoYou should have at least two to have critical redundancy. Not to mention making backup testing easier.
- Dylan16807 7y agoOkay, so by 'a little while' you mean a pretty significant amount of time. If you plan up front to migrate to new tapes every two generations (shrinking your collection 4x in the process!) then you'll never need a particularly old machine.
- protomyth 7y agoYeah, well true but mechanisms degrade and each generation is a pretty long as electronics go. The two generations ago reading should be an indication that you need to retake the old data. Getting old working drives is a pain, and the rental prices aren't cheap because you often need an expansion card to interface with the older drives.
- klodolph 7y agoI don’t know why this is being downvoted, because it’s absolutely true. Any data you want to read years down the road should be retaped to newer media generations. Don’t rely on the promise that you can read tapes two generations back—test it yourself, if it’s important.