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Can't you just keep the old drives you wrote the old tapes with?
by liability 7y ago
Can'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.