5 ms·

Why are tape drives fragile? I use them for my long term backups of personal files I thought they were robust ?

by zitterbewegung 5y ago

jl6 5y ago
What scale are you working at and how have you made it cost-effective versus a stack of external HDDs?
- adrian_b 5y ago
  I am not that poster, but I also use tapes. One may save about $14 per TB by using tapes instead of external HDDs (which strangely have become cheaper than internal HDDs). In order to recover the cost of the tape drive, you need to write about 200 TB. I have about 50 LTO-7 tapes, i.e. about 300 TB of compressed archives, so I have recovered much more than I have paid on a LTO-7 tape drive, 5 years ago. Nevertheless, even if would have written only 100 TB, I would still have bought the tape drive, just for the peace of mind, because after the optical discs became too small I have used HDDs for archival storage, but after a few years in cold storage they become unreliable. If I had not stored duplicates for each HDD, I would have lost a lot of data. Of course, someone who needs to archive just 20 TB or even 40 TB of raw data, can buy just 2 or 4 HDDs and store each file on 2 HDDs and that should be OK. For 100 TB or more of raw data (i.e. 200 TB, when counting the redundancy, because also for tapes you should store at least 2 copies, preferably not in the same location), tapes become cheaper.
- zitterbewegung 5y ago
  My brother got a cheap LTO tape drive on eBay and he bought a few LTO tapes so I think I bought one off of him for a few dollars more. It’s only a few hundred gigabytes and the tape holds about one terabytes . Note this is my long term cold storage I have backups made on my MacBook Air (hard disk) and my sold MacBook Pro (ssd which I will use on my new 2021 MacBook Pro eventually). I also have backups using blu ray discs and I have one long term storage blu ray that I have been meaning to use
blue1 5y ago
iomega stuff was generally rather precarious. LTO drives are solid.
mixmastamyk 5y ago
Optical discs aren't torn apart when the reader malfunctions?
- dragontamer 5y ago
  https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/my-cd-shattered-inside-my-cd-rom.290928/ https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/my-cd-shattered-insi... I've had a CD-ROM back in the day shatter on me like this. I'm pretty sure its a common enough story that everyone 'knows' it could happen... but was rare enough that not everyone personally came across it... but I never got to the bottom of it (why it happened, or what conditions led to it). It only ever happened to me once after all. It sounds like x56 speed drives were just too fast for some CD-ROMs. We went from x1 speed in the late 80s to x56 speed by the late 90s, so it makes sense that some CD-ROMs just weren't designed for the speed increase and maybe shatter. Alternatively: maybe some physical damage existed. We beat up CD-ROMs back in the day: storing them in backpacks without protectors and whatever. They were very reliable in terms of reading, but maybe those kinds of mistakes would lead to fractures that would literally blow up on you later. Even then: the most common protector were paper-sleeves, because dust / scratches were what we were most worried about. --------- We used to carry around stronger plastic cases in the early 90s. But by 00s, it was all paper-sleeves. The plastic-cases would themselves shatter when carried around, but the CD-ROMs / DVD-ROMs were stronger, lol.
  - mixmastamyk 5y ago
    Never seen it but have seen many ruined tapes over the years.
  - iypx 5y ago
    I remember my x52 drive would make at least 2 or 3 "test" spins every time I'd insert a disk, just to see how fast it can spin it. It felt like an airplane taking off every time I'd put a new scratch-less disk. I had one year warranty on that drive. This "feature" stopped working exactly one week after my warranty expired, it would just go full speed regardless of how beaten the disks were. That's how I got two of my heavily scratched disks shatter. A few more weeks down the road, the function that's supposed to slow down a disk before a full stop, also stopped working... so now even if a disk was spinning at x52 inside and you'd press the eject button, it would instantly stop the motor and eject it! That's when I finally threw it away and got myself a "normal" x46 or x44 (don't remember) drive...
adrian_b 5y ago
They are not fragile in an absolute sense, the poster meant that no matter what tape drive you have, it will break down many years before the tapes written with it would become unreadable. After the tape drive becomes unusable, you may no longer be able to buy another compatible tape drive, because they might be discontinued. For example I am using LTO-7 tapes. For the moment, I do not have to worry, because the current LTO-8 tape drives are able to read my LTO-7 tapes and the same should be true for the future LTO-9 tape drives. However, when LTO-9 tape drives will be the norm, I will have to buy a LTO-9 tape drive and many LTO-9 tapes and copy all my archives, because if I would delay this I would risk to no longer find even LTO-9 tape drives. In that case my tape collection will become unreadable, even if the tapes themselves are guaranteed for at least 30 years. I have already lost many years ago some archives that I had on QIC tape cartridges, because after my tape drive broke I was not able to find any other compatible tape drive.

Why are tape drives fragile? I use them for my long term backups of personal files I thought they were robust ?

jl6 5y ago

What scale are you working at and how have you made it cost-effective versus a stack of external HDDs?

adrian_b 5y ago
I am not that poster, but I also use tapes. One may save about $14 per TB by using tapes instead of external HDDs (which strangely have become cheaper than internal HDDs). In order to recover the cost of the tape drive, you need to write about 200 TB. I have about 50 LTO-7 tapes, i.e. about 300 TB of compressed archives, so I have recovered much more than I have paid on a LTO-7 tape drive, 5 years ago. Nevertheless, even if would have written only 100 TB, I would still have bought the tape drive, just for the peace of mind, because after the optical discs became too small I have used HDDs for archival storage, but after a few years in cold storage they become unreliable. If I had not stored duplicates for each HDD, I would have lost a lot of data. Of course, someone who needs to archive just 20 TB or even 40 TB of raw data, can buy just 2 or 4 HDDs and store each file on 2 HDDs and that should be OK. For 100 TB or more of raw data (i.e. 200 TB, when counting the redundancy, because also for tapes you should store at least 2 copies, preferably not in the same location), tapes become cheaper.
zitterbewegung 5y ago
My brother got a cheap LTO tape drive on eBay and he bought a few LTO tapes so I think I bought one off of him for a few dollars more. It’s only a few hundred gigabytes and the tape holds about one terabytes . Note this is my long term cold storage I have backups made on my MacBook Air (hard disk) and my sold MacBook Pro (ssd which I will use on my new 2021 MacBook Pro eventually). I also have backups using blu ray discs and I have one long term storage blu ray that I have been meaning to use

blue1 5y ago

iomega stuff was generally rather precarious. LTO drives are solid.

mixmastamyk 5y ago

Optical discs aren't torn apart when the reader malfunctions?

dragontamer 5y ago
https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/my-cd-shattered-inside-my-cd-rom.290928/ https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/my-cd-shattered-insi... I've had a CD-ROM back in the day shatter on me like this. I'm pretty sure its a common enough story that everyone 'knows' it could happen... but was rare enough that not everyone personally came across it... but I never got to the bottom of it (why it happened, or what conditions led to it). It only ever happened to me once after all. It sounds like x56 speed drives were just too fast for some CD-ROMs. We went from x1 speed in the late 80s to x56 speed by the late 90s, so it makes sense that some CD-ROMs just weren't designed for the speed increase and maybe shatter. Alternatively: maybe some physical damage existed. We beat up CD-ROMs back in the day: storing them in backpacks without protectors and whatever. They were very reliable in terms of reading, but maybe those kinds of mistakes would lead to fractures that would literally blow up on you later. Even then: the most common protector were paper-sleeves, because dust / scratches were what we were most worried about. --------- We used to carry around stronger plastic cases in the early 90s. But by 00s, it was all paper-sleeves. The plastic-cases would themselves shatter when carried around, but the CD-ROMs / DVD-ROMs were stronger, lol.
- mixmastamyk 5y ago
  Never seen it but have seen many ruined tapes over the years.
- iypx 5y ago
  I remember my x52 drive would make at least 2 or 3 "test" spins every time I'd insert a disk, just to see how fast it can spin it. It felt like an airplane taking off every time I'd put a new scratch-less disk. I had one year warranty on that drive. This "feature" stopped working exactly one week after my warranty expired, it would just go full speed regardless of how beaten the disks were. That's how I got two of my heavily scratched disks shatter. A few more weeks down the road, the function that's supposed to slow down a disk before a full stop, also stopped working... so now even if a disk was spinning at x52 inside and you'd press the eject button, it would instantly stop the motor and eject it! That's when I finally threw it away and got myself a "normal" x46 or x44 (don't remember) drive...

adrian_b 5y ago

They are not fragile in an absolute sense, the poster meant that no matter what tape drive you have, it will break down many years before the tapes written with it would become unreadable. After the tape drive becomes unusable, you may no longer be able to buy another compatible tape drive, because they might be discontinued. For example I am using LTO-7 tapes. For the moment, I do not have to worry, because the current LTO-8 tape drives are able to read my LTO-7 tapes and the same should be true for the future LTO-9 tape drives. However, when LTO-9 tape drives will be the norm, I will have to buy a LTO-9 tape drive and many LTO-9 tapes and copy all my archives, because if I would delay this I would risk to no longer find even LTO-9 tape drives. In that case my tape collection will become unreadable, even if the tapes themselves are guaranteed for at least 30 years. I have already lost many years ago some archives that I had on QIC tape cartridges, because after my tape drive broke I was not able to find any other compatible tape drive.