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"We use tapes, still, in this age because they're actually a very cost-effective way as a last resort for Gmail. " .. what kind of tape drives does Google use?
by delinquentme 15y ago
"We use tapes, still, in this age because they're actually a very cost-effective way as a last resort for Gmail. "
.. what kind of tape drives does Google use?
- dholowiski 15y agoBFT... big freaking tapes. I wonder if it's really tape though. You can get 'tape' backup systems where the cartrige looks just like a tape, but it's actually a special hard drive. I wouldn't be surprised if that's it. Otherwise, I wonder how many miles (of tape) long my gmail inbox is?
- wmf 15y agoGoogle wouldn't buy a VTL when they already have GFS. When they say tape, they must mean tape.
- btilly 15y agoUrs wouldn't have said tape if he didn't mean tape. This brings to mind an amusing anecdote. I once saw a conversation about how many miles of tape are storing Viagra ads. Someone quipped, "The only thing that I know for certain is that the trend is up."
- zinkem 15y agoAccording to one source I found[1], 60 meters of DAT tape holds 1300mb of data. That's 21.67mb per meter. My gmail inbox is 679mb, thats about 31 meters of DAT tape. [1] http://menehune.opt.wfu.edu/Kokua/SGI/007-2861-005/sgi_html/ch04.html#id5197689 http://menehune.opt.wfu.edu/Kokua/SGI/007-2861-005/sgi_html/...
- whatusername 15y agoLTO5 hit's about 1.8GB per metre. Or about 3.6GB compressed.[1] There's a reason that people say tape is still cost effective -- and it's not DAT. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_Tape-Open http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_Tape-Open
- whatusername 15y agoLikely a lot less than 1 mile. LTO5 stores approximately 3 TB with Compression. (1.5 Native). It is 846m long. Let us assume you have 7597MB of emails in your gmail inbox. That's about .48% of the capacity of a Uncompressed tape. So that's a smidge over 4m. And if google compresses their data -- then you're potentially looking about 2m.