7 ms·

Say I have around 25TB of a personal data hoard. Does tape make sense yet cost wise, instead of buying have it backed up over 2 HDDs?

luhn 6y ago
Most likely not, since you’ll need to purchase a drive for reading and writing the data. That alone will cost more than a couple hard drives.
- tpmx 6y ago
  Idea for someone: IsTapeBackupWorthIt.com - showing the amount of data you need for tape backups to make sense at any given point in time. Niche audience for sure, but revenue per click is going to be pretty high. If tapes are worth it for someone -> show referal links to some trusted tape provider partner based on region Otherwise, show good deals on hard drives, per region. And recommendations on QNAP/Synology enclosures.
  - tpmx 6y ago
    Someone registered the domain just now, fantastic! I hope they also implement something suitable, instead of just putting some crappy google text ads on it.
Spooky23 6y ago
Tape makes more sense at higher volumes and more difficult retention needs. Even then, as disk sizes crossed the TB boundary, VTL and S3 made many of these use cases difficult to justify tape investments. Early in my career, I worked at a place that had to retain certain records for up to 100 years. At the time (circa 1999), they had a big tape silo solution that probably cost something like $10M/year (or more) to own and staff. Today, capacity for "cool" data is essentially unlimited and near-free. You could host all of that data on a small device locally (if needed), and retain the data (and outsource the engineering for long term retention) in one or more cloud services for <$100k/year>.
synack 6y ago
I bought a Fibre Channel LTO-5 drive and HBA off eBay a few months ago for $211.81, including cables and a power supply. New LTO-5 tapes are $8/TB right now, whereas the cheapest spinning disks are around $15/TB. At those prices, the break-even is about 64 TB, anything more than that and tape is cheaper. https://diskprices.com/?locale=us&condition=new&disk_types=lto5 https://diskprices.com/?locale=us&condition=new&disk_types=l...
- manquer 6y ago
  You also need to account for duration of storage. i.e. the spinning disks will need lot more replacement than the tape would over period of few years.
  - synack 6y ago
    IBM's documentation specifies 10 years shelf life for the tapes in non-ideal storage conditions and 30 years if kept in stable temperature/humidity. Even the most reliable hard drives only come with a 5 year warranty, so yeah, you'd probably want to double the relative price.
- omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
  Do you have a link to the $8/TB cartridges?
- fulafel 6y ago
  Are there used tapes on the market?
  - ZiiS 6y ago
    Yes, but they are only specified for ~200 full writes. Hard to economize on backups.
    - fulafel 6y ago
      Interesting. I guess incremental backup or archive applico would still leave a lot of lightly used media on the aftermarket, when those users upgrade to newer tape tech.

luhn 6y ago

Most likely not, since you’ll need to purchase a drive for reading and writing the data. That alone will cost more than a couple hard drives.

tpmx 6y ago
Idea for someone: IsTapeBackupWorthIt.com - showing the amount of data you need for tape backups to make sense at any given point in time. Niche audience for sure, but revenue per click is going to be pretty high. If tapes are worth it for someone -> show referal links to some trusted tape provider partner based on region Otherwise, show good deals on hard drives, per region. And recommendations on QNAP/Synology enclosures.
- tpmx 6y ago
  Someone registered the domain just now, fantastic! I hope they also implement something suitable, instead of just putting some crappy google text ads on it.

Spooky23 6y ago

Tape makes more sense at higher volumes and more difficult retention needs. Even then, as disk sizes crossed the TB boundary, VTL and S3 made many of these use cases difficult to justify tape investments. Early in my career, I worked at a place that had to retain certain records for up to 100 years. At the time (circa 1999), they had a big tape silo solution that probably cost something like $10M/year (or more) to own and staff. Today, capacity for "cool" data is essentially unlimited and near-free. You could host all of that data on a small device locally (if needed), and retain the data (and outsource the engineering for long term retention) in one or more cloud services for <$100k/year>.

synack 6y ago

I bought a Fibre Channel LTO-5 drive and HBA off eBay a few months ago for $211.81, including cables and a power supply. New LTO-5 tapes are $8/TB right now, whereas the cheapest spinning disks are around $15/TB. At those prices, the break-even is about 64 TB, anything more than that and tape is cheaper. https://diskprices.com/?locale=us&condition=new&disk_types=lto5 https://diskprices.com/?locale=us&condition=new&disk_types=l...

manquer 6y ago
You also need to account for duration of storage. i.e. the spinning disks will need lot more replacement than the tape would over period of few years.
- synack 6y ago
  IBM's documentation specifies 10 years shelf life for the tapes in non-ideal storage conditions and 30 years if kept in stable temperature/humidity. Even the most reliable hard drives only come with a 5 year warranty, so yeah, you'd probably want to double the relative price.
omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
Do you have a link to the $8/TB cartridges?
fulafel 6y ago
Are there used tapes on the market?
- ZiiS 6y ago
  Yes, but they are only specified for ~200 full writes. Hard to economize on backups.
  - fulafel 6y ago
    Interesting. I guess incremental backup or archive applico would still leave a lot of lightly used media on the aftermarket, when those users upgrade to newer tape tech.