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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, wh

by 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.