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Talking about hoarding, LTO tapes are the king of cheap storage, but if you want to archive significant amounts (hundreds of TB or more), it takes a significant
by Tepix 2y ago
Talking about hoarding, LTO tapes are the king of cheap storage, but if you want to archive significant amounts (hundreds of TB or more), it takes a significant investment to buy a tape library with somewhat recent drive. Too bad there aren't any alternatives - or are there?
- wkat4242 2y agoTapes are really crap for home use though. They're expensive, super noisy. You constantly have to change them during backing up. What I do now is use a whole box full of older harddrives that I replaced in my NAS. And I basically use them as tapes with a change frame.
- Tepix 2y agoYeah, that's why i wrote that you need a tape library so you change 8 tapes at a time. If you have LTO-7, writing 8*6TB = 48 TB before having to change tapes sounds pretty good.
- technopol 2y agoHow long do they last, and what will you do when they stop making tapes and equipment to read them? I ask because I came from a generation with a lot of tapes (reels, cassettes, 8-track, Betamax, VHS, etc.). Cassettes are coming back a little, but not much. I know long-term storage still uses tapes, but I wonder for how long. What happens when we run out of the resources to make them? Is there no better and safer long-term media that is affordable? A magnetic event could wipe them all.
- alpaca128 2y agoTapes are still being actively developed for archiving by companies like Fuji, Sony and IBM. They’re not going away any time soon. And if a magnetic event is strong enough to wipe all your tapes you probably have bigger problems on your hands than a fried backup.
- Tepix 2y agoI think you're good for 20 years or so if you store the tapes well. Pretty much all of the industry is using LTO tapes so i don't see them going away soon.
- wkat4242 2y agoHm yeah but those tapes, they're not really a lot cheaper than a HDD of that capacity. And a tape library is a very expensive, huge and noisy.
- roygbiv2 2y agoAnd as I found out the drives are tempermental. I had a tape library and eventually both drives said they'd needed cleaning, even after cleaning. When it worked it was great, though a cheap NAS with a couple of hard drives in it replaced it and was far more reliable and cheaper.
- Tepix 2y agoHere i'm seeing the cheapest HDD at a cost of 15€/TB and LTO-9 tape at 4.72€/TB. That's more than a 3x difference.