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> The only real disadvantage of tapes is the high cost of the tape drives The real disadvantage of tapes is what the drive may die at any time and if you don't

> The only real disadvantage of tapes is the high cost of the tape drives The real disadvantage of tapes is what the drive may die at any time and if you don't have another drive then you can't recover. And a replacement drive wouldn't be cheap (new) or reliable (used).

adrian_b 3y ago
While this is true, HDDs are much worse, because the probability that a HDD will die at any time and without warnings is many times higher than for any tape drive. When a HDDs dies, that is far worse than when a tape drive dies, because you not only lose some money, but you also lose data, which may be priceless, unless you have been careful to have backup copies. While there are some companies that offer data recovery services from defective HDDs, for recent HDD models such services can be very expensive, comparable with the cost of a tape drive and much more expensive than the service of copying a good tape on a HDD, which can be done when it is not possible to buy a replacement drive immediately and the data is needed urgently.
- justsomehnguy 3y ago
  > HDD will die at any time and without warnings is many times higher than for any tape drive It's same most of the time and LTO drive dies if you have at least any amount of dust while HDD doesn't give a fuck > but you also lose data, which may be priceless No difference if you sat on the tape with yours only one copy of your favourite porn. And if you only have one copy of data then it doesn't really matter on which media it resides. And oh, you CAN write the same data to two HDDs simultaneously with mirroring or just having a two copy jobs to a two separate hard drives, which would not only give you a physical separation but logical as well. For you to do the same with the tape - shell another $3000.
leptons 3y ago
The drives are relatively cheap. I picked up an LTO-5 drive for about $150. I don't care that it's used. At that price I can buy 3 of them so that I have spares. And the next gen tape drive will always read the previous gen tapes. So it's an easy upgrade path. I'll go to LTO-6 when those drives come down a little in price on the used market. Then LTO-7 if I'm even alive lone enough to need that much storage. Realistically, I have about 30-40 years left in me and after that I don't really care what happens to my backups. They're encrypted, with parity files, so it's not unreasonable to think that these backups will last me the rest of my life.

adrian_b 3y ago

While this is true, HDDs are much worse, because the probability that a HDD will die at any time and without warnings is many times higher than for any tape drive. When a HDDs dies, that is far worse than when a tape drive dies, because you not only lose some money, but you also lose data, which may be priceless, unless you have been careful to have backup copies. While there are some companies that offer data recovery services from defective HDDs, for recent HDD models such services can be very expensive, comparable with the cost of a tape drive and much more expensive than the service of copying a good tape on a HDD, which can be done when it is not possible to buy a replacement drive immediately and the data is needed urgently.

justsomehnguy 3y ago
> HDD will die at any time and without warnings is many times higher than for any tape drive It's same most of the time and LTO drive dies if you have at least any amount of dust while HDD doesn't give a fuck > but you also lose data, which may be priceless No difference if you sat on the tape with yours only one copy of your favourite porn. And if you only have one copy of data then it doesn't really matter on which media it resides. And oh, you CAN write the same data to two HDDs simultaneously with mirroring or just having a two copy jobs to a two separate hard drives, which would not only give you a physical separation but logical as well. For you to do the same with the tape - shell another $3000.

leptons 3y ago

The drives are relatively cheap. I picked up an LTO-5 drive for about $150. I don't care that it's used. At that price I can buy 3 of them so that I have spares. And the next gen tape drive will always read the previous gen tapes. So it's an easy upgrade path. I'll go to LTO-6 when those drives come down a little in price on the used market. Then LTO-7 if I'm even alive lone enough to need that much storage. Realistically, I have about 30-40 years left in me and after that I don't really care what happens to my backups. They're encrypted, with parity files, so it's not unreasonable to think that these backups will last me the rest of my life.