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> If you hold onto these things for decades It's always amusing when people bash tapes for the lack of backwards compatibility, but... Hey, try to find a work

> If you hold onto these things for decades It's always amusing when people bash tapes for the lack of backwards compatibility, but... Hey, try to find a working system with PATA drives support? Try to connect SATA150 drive to SATA-III port? How about SCSI-320? People like to talk, but I always said what if your data has a value then it's your responsibility to have means to backup and to restore it. If your data "is extremely valuable" but all your C-level are approving is a single drive decade old library - you can write your backups straight to /dev/null, because your data is worthless for your C-level.

matheusmoreira 4y ago
I'm not "bashing" tapes, I'm pointing out the fact they have limited backwards compatibility guarantees. Given the massive expense of tape drives and the fact you need to keep replacing them and the tapes just to keep up with new LTO standards puts this almost perfect solution out of reach of mere mortals like me. I'm not an enterprise, there is no "C-level" approving anything.
- justsomehnguy 4y ago
  > I'm not "bashing" tapes Oh, this wasn't pointed at you at all, sorry for the misunderstanding. > Given the massive expense of tape drives and the fact you need to keep replacing them and the tapes just to keep up with new LTO standards Well, you don't need to keep replacing them. The rolling upgrade (gradually replacing the tapes and drives for a new generation) makes sense only if you have tens to hundreds of drives and thousands and thousands of tapes - ie for those insane enterprise libraries. For everything else, be it a small enterprise or a "mere mortals" it would be always cheaper to just buy a whole new library/autoloader. And if the cost of initial buyout is too much then of course tapes aren't for you... along with the compatibility woes.
Karunamon 4y ago
SCSI 320 HBAs are pretty easy to find in the usual places nowadays. And they work on modern systems.
- justsomehnguy 4y ago
  Until they don't. And modern systems doesn't have PCI-X slots. Sure, there are still Adaptec cards out there... which doesn't exists as a company since 2010/2016. And I have a first hand experience with HP P800 not working in PCI-E 2.0 slots. Are sure your old SCSI320 card would work in something like PCI-E 4/5 or even newer?

matheusmoreira 4y ago

I'm not "bashing" tapes, I'm pointing out the fact they have limited backwards compatibility guarantees. Given the massive expense of tape drives and the fact you need to keep replacing them and the tapes just to keep up with new LTO standards puts this almost perfect solution out of reach of mere mortals like me. I'm not an enterprise, there is no "C-level" approving anything.

justsomehnguy 4y ago
> I'm not "bashing" tapes Oh, this wasn't pointed at you at all, sorry for the misunderstanding. > Given the massive expense of tape drives and the fact you need to keep replacing them and the tapes just to keep up with new LTO standards Well, you don't need to keep replacing them. The rolling upgrade (gradually replacing the tapes and drives for a new generation) makes sense only if you have tens to hundreds of drives and thousands and thousands of tapes - ie for those insane enterprise libraries. For everything else, be it a small enterprise or a "mere mortals" it would be always cheaper to just buy a whole new library/autoloader. And if the cost of initial buyout is too much then of course tapes aren't for you... along with the compatibility woes.

Karunamon 4y ago

SCSI 320 HBAs are pretty easy to find in the usual places nowadays. And they work on modern systems.

justsomehnguy 4y ago
Until they don't. And modern systems doesn't have PCI-X slots. Sure, there are still Adaptec cards out there... which doesn't exists as a company since 2010/2016. And I have a first hand experience with HP P800 not working in PCI-E 2.0 slots. Are sure your old SCSI320 card would work in something like PCI-E 4/5 or even newer?