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If folks are curious about the benefits/drawbacks/etc of the medium, I would highly recommend checking out the media presentations given at the Library of Congr

If folks are curious about the benefits/drawbacks/etc of the medium, I would highly recommend checking out the media presentations given at the Library of Congress Designing Storage Architectures meeting (most slides are online -- scroll down to the "Designing Storage Architectures Meetings" section and click through to each year's list of presentations): http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/meetings/index.html http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/meetings/index.html The 2019 meeting just happened and had a lot of good info about current use of tape, slides should be online in another couple weeks. (I presented there this year and work at the Internet Archive, though we do not currently use tape in our storage infrastructure.)

brador 7y ago
> slides should be online in another couple weeks. Why does it take so long?
- hamandcheese 7y ago
  They have to be loaded from tape.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- pletnes 7y ago
  The tape has to rewind.
- jhoechtl 7y ago
  People have something better to do instead providing information to you for free?
  - monocasa 7y ago
    To be fair, the job of the Library of Congress is providing information for free.
    - booi 7y ago
      how do they pay for it? because if it's taxes...
      - monocasa 7y ago
        Honest question: When you ask that (particularly in places like HN), are you expecting someone to have a revelation and and not understand that taxes pay for government services? Like free is shorthand for "no cost at time of use" here.
      - modsiw 7y ago
        Our forefathers put their tooth fairy money in a trust to maintain the sum total of human knowledge. Ever notice how people back in the day all had missing teeth? Like Washington and his wooden dentures? We owe them mightily.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- ghaff 7y ago
  Because someone probably has to take time out of their day job to do so. Also, if it’s like any other conference I have ever attended, half the presenters didn’t send in slides and have to be hounded to do so—and many still won’t get around to it.
dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
For the impatient, could you summarize it for the tape?
- zaarn 7y ago
  Basically, tape has a very very high latency (on the order of minutes to hours) for random access and it has a very low number of writes (usually a few dozen) before you need to copy it to a new medium. The drives are also quite expensive and if you use them for backups, you need to keep one ready in case the other borks it but you need the tape's data. Lastly you need specialized tools for access since most average tools will mishandle the tape.
  - peter_tonoli 7y ago
    Not sure where you've got the 'few dozen' number from - that's not to my experience. Tandberg quote "1,000,000 passes on any area of tape, equates to over 20,000 end to end passes/260 full tape backup" http://www.tandbergdata.com/default/assets/File/Data_Sheets/DS_LTO_media_US.pdf http://www.tandbergdata.com/default/assets/File/Data_Sheets/...
    - zaarn 7y ago
      Atleast from what I've been told and from experience, if you rotate over master backup tapes every few months, the tape will be almost 6 years old by the time it reaches the first two dozen end to end writes, that usually means newer LTO standards, newer drives and newer tapes on the market to replace them with.
    - Dylan16807 7y ago
      > 1,000,000 passes on any area of tape, equates to over 20,000 end to end passes What in the world does that first number mean? My best guess is that it's some nonsense math based on the fact that the tape head contacts 32 tracks at once. So writing a full tape is 1 "full pass", which equals 208 "end to end passes" as the tape feeds back and forth, which equals 6656 """passes on any area""".
  - 7y ago

brador 7y ago

> slides should be online in another couple weeks. Why does it take so long?

hamandcheese 7y ago
They have to be loaded from tape.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
pletnes 7y ago
The tape has to rewind.
jhoechtl 7y ago
People have something better to do instead providing information to you for free?
- monocasa 7y ago
  To be fair, the job of the Library of Congress is providing information for free.
  - booi 7y ago
    how do they pay for it? because if it's taxes...
    - monocasa 7y ago
      Honest question: When you ask that (particularly in places like HN), are you expecting someone to have a revelation and and not understand that taxes pay for government services? Like free is shorthand for "no cost at time of use" here.
    - modsiw 7y ago
      Our forefathers put their tooth fairy money in a trust to maintain the sum total of human knowledge. Ever notice how people back in the day all had missing teeth? Like Washington and his wooden dentures? We owe them mightily.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ghaff 7y ago
Because someone probably has to take time out of their day job to do so. Also, if it’s like any other conference I have ever attended, half the presenters didn’t send in slides and have to be hounded to do so—and many still won’t get around to it.

dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago

For the impatient, could you summarize it for the tape?

zaarn 7y ago
Basically, tape has a very very high latency (on the order of minutes to hours) for random access and it has a very low number of writes (usually a few dozen) before you need to copy it to a new medium. The drives are also quite expensive and if you use them for backups, you need to keep one ready in case the other borks it but you need the tape's data. Lastly you need specialized tools for access since most average tools will mishandle the tape.
- peter_tonoli 7y ago
  Not sure where you've got the 'few dozen' number from - that's not to my experience. Tandberg quote "1,000,000 passes on any area of tape, equates to over 20,000 end to end passes/260 full tape backup" http://www.tandbergdata.com/default/assets/File/Data_Sheets/DS_LTO_media_US.pdf http://www.tandbergdata.com/default/assets/File/Data_Sheets/...
  - zaarn 7y ago
    Atleast from what I've been told and from experience, if you rotate over master backup tapes every few months, the tape will be almost 6 years old by the time it reaches the first two dozen end to end writes, that usually means newer LTO standards, newer drives and newer tapes on the market to replace them with.
  - Dylan16807 7y ago
    > 1,000,000 passes on any area of tape, equates to over 20,000 end to end passes What in the world does that first number mean? My best guess is that it's some nonsense math based on the fact that the tape head contacts 32 tracks at once. So writing a full tape is 1 "full pass", which equals 208 "end to end passes" as the tape feeds back and forth, which equals 6656 """passes on any area""".
- 7y ago