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Personally I bought a used tape machine and some $20 2.5TB tapes. It supports hardware encryption and the backup process is pretty much "tar cvf /dev/st0 /some

Personally I bought a used tape machine and some $20 2.5TB tapes. It supports hardware encryption and the backup process is pretty much "tar cvf /dev/st0 /some/files". Downside is you don't actually save money doing this, because the drive costs ~$800. Upside is you're not relying on anybody else for worst-case scenario recovery of your important data. The actual read/write speed are about as fast as HDD, but if you're compressing it's easy to get blocked on CPU and get a fraction of that. Mine supports hardware encryption with AES, newer ones have hardware compression and better read/write/storage per tape. Actually, Backblaze already supports shipping an HDD, so if they supported shipping cheap tapes they might be usable for archival backups too.

gruez 5y ago
What's the upside to using tape? You mentioned that you don't save money doing this, at least with your scale. Why not just back up to a few hard drives?
- MichaelBurge 5y ago
  Hard drives go bad more frequently than tape, and don't actually save you any work if you're making multiple redundant encrypted copies. I have 26 terabytes on my NAS, so with 2 copies I'd probably use $800 in HDDs? I could swap to a new 10TB HDD every few hours just like a tape, attach group labels just like a tape, it'd have similar speed, and I'd probably write new images to the same HDDs every so often. The word "just" sounds like you think it's less work, but it sounds the same to me. FWIW, I did roll from HDD to HDD for years, so I'm familiar with the concept.
tomnipotent 5y ago
Are you not concerned with having the backups in the same location as your source? It's rare, but it doesn't protect against fire, flood, and theft.
- MichaelBurge 5y ago
  They're tapes with encrypted data, and they're $20 each. You can write many copies, check the hash, and distribute them in many places. Put them in safety deposit boxes at the bank, give copies to a friend, bury them in your backyard, and - yes - store a set or two in the closet. Because they're encrypted, there is the issue of the encryption key needing to be managed. But that's the only issue.
- spacedcowboy 5y ago
  See my reply[1] above [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29535055 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29535055
philsnow 5y ago
What do you do if the $800 drive dies? The ~ubiquity of ethernet / fast-ish wifi is is one of the best reasons to use online backups. > Mine supports hardware encryption with AES Can you get the bytes off the tapes without that particular drive (or that particular model of drives)? I prefer software RAID over hardware RAID because I don't want to have to keep a replacement card around.

gruez 5y ago

What's the upside to using tape? You mentioned that you don't save money doing this, at least with your scale. Why not just back up to a few hard drives?

MichaelBurge 5y ago
Hard drives go bad more frequently than tape, and don't actually save you any work if you're making multiple redundant encrypted copies. I have 26 terabytes on my NAS, so with 2 copies I'd probably use $800 in HDDs? I could swap to a new 10TB HDD every few hours just like a tape, attach group labels just like a tape, it'd have similar speed, and I'd probably write new images to the same HDDs every so often. The word "just" sounds like you think it's less work, but it sounds the same to me. FWIW, I did roll from HDD to HDD for years, so I'm familiar with the concept.

tomnipotent 5y ago

Are you not concerned with having the backups in the same location as your source? It's rare, but it doesn't protect against fire, flood, and theft.

MichaelBurge 5y ago
They're tapes with encrypted data, and they're $20 each. You can write many copies, check the hash, and distribute them in many places. Put them in safety deposit boxes at the bank, give copies to a friend, bury them in your backyard, and - yes - store a set or two in the closet. Because they're encrypted, there is the issue of the encryption key needing to be managed. But that's the only issue.
spacedcowboy 5y ago
See my reply[1] above [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29535055 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29535055

philsnow 5y ago

What do you do if the $800 drive dies? The ~ubiquity of ethernet / fast-ish wifi is is one of the best reasons to use online backups. > Mine supports hardware encryption with AES Can you get the bytes off the tapes without that particular drive (or that particular model of drives)? I prefer software RAID over hardware RAID because I don't want to have to keep a replacement card around.