4 ms·

How much is 1.5PB of tapes, and 1.5PB of hard drives?

jpc0 3y ago
I would hazard a guess that storing tapes takes up significantly less physical space than hard drives. I don't think hard drive based storage and tape bases storage have quite the same use case.
- dagw 3y ago
  I would hazard a guess that storing tapes takes up significantly less physical space than hard drives. An 18TB tape is basically the same size as an 18TB 3.5" hard drive.
  - adrian_b 3y ago
    I doubt that this can be true. I am using older LTO-7 cartridges, with a raw capacity of 6 TB. The newer LTO cartridges must be compatible mechanically with the old cartridges, because the same drive must be able to read and write them. The LTO cartridges are smaller than 3.5" drives, they have maybe about 2/3 of the volume of a 3.5" HDD. Moreover, a tape cartridge is many times lighter than a HDD. I have suitcases with 20 tape cartridges that are as convenient to carry as any typical suitcase. A luggage carrying 20 HDDs would have a very noticeable weight, and its volume would be great not only due to the bigger HDDs, but it would require serious padding to avoid HDD destruction if the case were dropped accidentally.
    - dagw 3y ago
      OK, you made me do the math. LTO tapes are 225 cm^3 and 3.5" HDDs are 245 cm^3 so I stand corrected. The weight point is a really good one as well as a HDD is 3 times the weight of a tape.
dagw 3y ago
Tapes are roughly 3 times cheaper pr. TB than hard drives.
wongarsu 3y ago
About $8000 of LTO-9 tape, $21000 of Toshiba MG10 hard drives, $38000 of Seagate IronWolf Pro NAS hard drives.
throw0101a 3y ago
18TB(raw) LTO-9 tapes go for US$ 105: * https://tapeandmedia.com/lto-ultrium-9-tapes/ https://tapeandmedia.com/lto-ultrium-9-tapes/ If your data is compressible then you can of course store more. The drives themselves use Streaming Lossless Data Compression, but of course you can send them things like gzip, JPEG, MPEG files which are already compressed; SLDC: * https://www.ecma-international.org/wp-content/uploads/ECMA-321_1st_edition_june_2001.pdf https://www.ecma-international.org/wp-content/uploads/ECMA-3... LTO-10 is supposed to have 36TB raw and is estimated for perhaps 2024.

jpc0 3y ago

I would hazard a guess that storing tapes takes up significantly less physical space than hard drives. I don't think hard drive based storage and tape bases storage have quite the same use case.

dagw 3y ago
I would hazard a guess that storing tapes takes up significantly less physical space than hard drives. An 18TB tape is basically the same size as an 18TB 3.5" hard drive.
- adrian_b 3y ago
  I doubt that this can be true. I am using older LTO-7 cartridges, with a raw capacity of 6 TB. The newer LTO cartridges must be compatible mechanically with the old cartridges, because the same drive must be able to read and write them. The LTO cartridges are smaller than 3.5" drives, they have maybe about 2/3 of the volume of a 3.5" HDD. Moreover, a tape cartridge is many times lighter than a HDD. I have suitcases with 20 tape cartridges that are as convenient to carry as any typical suitcase. A luggage carrying 20 HDDs would have a very noticeable weight, and its volume would be great not only due to the bigger HDDs, but it would require serious padding to avoid HDD destruction if the case were dropped accidentally.
  - dagw 3y ago
    OK, you made me do the math. LTO tapes are 225 cm^3 and 3.5" HDDs are 245 cm^3 so I stand corrected. The weight point is a really good one as well as a HDD is 3 times the weight of a tape.

dagw 3y ago

Tapes are roughly 3 times cheaper pr. TB than hard drives.

wongarsu 3y ago

About $8000 of LTO-9 tape, $21000 of Toshiba MG10 hard drives, $38000 of Seagate IronWolf Pro NAS hard drives.

throw0101a 3y ago

18TB(raw) LTO-9 tapes go for US$ 105: * https://tapeandmedia.com/lto-ultrium-9-tapes/ https://tapeandmedia.com/lto-ultrium-9-tapes/ If your data is compressible then you can of course store more. The drives themselves use Streaming Lossless Data Compression, but of course you can send them things like gzip, JPEG, MPEG files which are already compressed; SLDC: * https://www.ecma-international.org/wp-content/uploads/ECMA-321_1st_edition_june_2001.pdf https://www.ecma-international.org/wp-content/uploads/ECMA-3... LTO-10 is supposed to have 36TB raw and is estimated for perhaps 2024.