4 ms·

LTO tape exists and should last 30 to 50 years in good storage conditions.

VikingCoder 9mo ago
I have a normal PC... I'd love some kind of external tape drive that I can connect with USB-C, or USB-3... But everything is SAS? And no way to convert SAS to SATA? Recommendations?
- 8fingerlouie 9mo ago
  No recommendations, just brings back memories of the “good old days” with QIC-80 tapes and ZIP drives, both of which came with “desktop” in mind. I still have a ZIP drive around with a parallel port connector. I haven’t owned a computer with a parallel port in 20+ years. I probably also have a QIC-80 tape drive around somewhere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter-inch_cartridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter-inch_cartridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_drive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_drive
  - bombcar 9mo ago
    SLR100 for life!
  - sowbug 9mo ago
    It would be neat if someone resurrected Iomega and launched the 2026 version of the Zip drive for local backup. It'd be something like $200 (same as the original Zip drive) and it would take 20TB WORM tapes that cost $20 each. There would be some kind of horrible limitation, like it would take 2 months 24/7 to actually write 20TB, but it would come with simple software that rapaciously grabbed your whole cloud life and local data, and the tapes would last forever. I just looked, and iomega.com seems to be some kind of malware site. Sad.
- UltraSane 9mo ago
  The cheapest option is to get a SAS pcie card and a new drive like https://www.ebay.com/itm/198052084090 https://www.ebay.com/itm/198052084090 or try a much cheaper used drive. LTO drives are expensive but they are very well designed and it is the most reliable portable storage format available. Full LTO tapes in a good fire rated safe really provide a fantastic sense of security. The cost of the drive is amortized over the total bytes you store.
  - ted_dunning 9mo ago
    Those tapes in a fire rated safe give a sense of security before the fire. After the fire, it is likely that the tapes and the papers in the safe are a pile of ash. Fire-rated safes often don't survive fires especially if you live in wildfire country.
    - UltraSane 9mo ago
      I mean a UL 72 Class 125 rated safe or file cabinet with a 2-hour fire endurance rating
- aidenn0 9mo ago
  No recommendations, but you can get a thunderbolt to SAS adapter; they aren't cheap though.
- geocar 9mo ago
  Try searching for thunderbolt lto. I know MagStor has one with usb-c presentation.
8fingerlouie 9mo ago
Assuming you need to “get up and go”, like a refugee situation, what are the chances that you’ll find a drive that can read Blu-ray disks, versus the chances that you’ll find a LTO tape drive ?
- aidenn0 9mo ago
  Blu-ray drives are fast becoming hard to find, so I'd pack a USB bluray drive with your discs. New computers don't have them and haven't for a few years. I purchased a drive recently and to get a quality drive, I had to go for a NOS pioneer drive, or get another LG, and the LG drives are kid-of shit.
  - gambiting 9mo ago
    How exactly are they becoming hard to find? There's literally tens of options for brand new drives I can order for next day delivery on Amazon, and endless choice of second hand options on eBay.
Spooky23 9mo ago
For individuals? No. LTO is enterprise gear that is not suitable for people. If you want to waste alot of time with backups, curate your stuff and get it on optical media. Better yet, print the good stuff on archival papers and ink and stow them securely.
- UltraSane 9mo ago
  LTO drives are expensive but well within the means of the average programmer or sysadmin. https://www.ebay.com/itm/198052084090 https://www.ebay.com/itm/198052084090 Optical media is an absolutely terrible format for long term archiving.
  - ghshephard 9mo ago
    mDisc is an optical format designed, and tested for 100+ years of storage, can be read from a consumer dvd player and cost <$10 a disc.
    - geocar 9mo ago
      LTO9 is like 45TB for <$100 (I got a bunch for €55 a piece), so 4.5TB for <$10 is being generous. And even if you didn't think they lasted 30-40 years and made copies every 3 years, it's still cheaper, not to mention you have fewer tapes to manage. Also: I don't have a bd/dvd player in my house today, so even if there are the most tremendous gains in medical sciences I'm almost certainly not going to have one in 100+ years, so I'm not sure m disc even makes cost-sense for smaller volumes. Maybe if you want to keep your data outside for sunshine like the author of the article, but that's not me...
      - somat 9mo ago
        > Also: I don't have a bd/dvd player in my house today You have just stumbled on the inherent problem with any archival media. You really think you will have a working tape drive after 40 years? Hell, in my experience tape drives are mechanically complex and full of super thin plastic wear surfaces. Do you really expect to have a working tape drive in 10 years? As far as I can tell there is no good way to do long term static digital archives, And in the absence of that you have to depend on dynamic archives, transfer to new media every 5 years. I think to have realistic long term static archives the best method is to only depend on the mark 1 eyeball. find your 100 best pictures, and print them out. identify important data and print it out. Stuff you want to leave to future generations, make sure it is in a form they can read.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
hakfoo 9mo ago
I'm curious about "good storage conditions". What are the threat models for tape, and how much do they vary for discs? I assume if I leave either in my car in an Arizona summer day, it's toast. But are tapes more prone to mould damage in a damp climate, or media shedding if fed through a slightly out-of-adjustment drive? The problem with M-disc was that it was always a sideshow on the mainstream optical disc market-- like LightScribe/LabelFlash, it was a feature most people weren't interested in except for possibly box-checking during purchase. The main audience was still people buying generic blank discs and burning single use discs or short-term backups. There is/was an opportunity to box the product up with a clear marketing message of "here's a SMB-scale backup solution", something cheaper than tape, and more built-for-purpose than buying USB hard drives and dangling them off the back of a PC. I'm picturing the M-disc technology but each disc is pre-installed in a cartridge to discourage accidental scratches/fingerprints/leaving surfaces directly exposed to the sun. It reinforces the "this is durable and you can probably put legal documents you might need for 5-10-20 years on it and leave it in a safe" story. This also creates a vendor-lockin product at a premium price, while quality conventional CD/DVD media was always competing with "but Fry's has spindles of 500 discs for $12.99!"
- UltraSane 9mo ago
  Optimal LTO tape storage requires a stable, clean environment, ideally 15°C to 25°C (59°F to 77°F) and 20% to 50% relative humidity (non-condensing), which can preserve data for up to 30 years. Tapes must be stored vertically in their protective plastic cases to prevent sagging and contamination.
nxobject 9mo ago
The tapes? Yes. The hardware, though? I'm not sure I would bet on having compatible hardware to read a particular LTO generation tape, decades from now, given how specialty the hardware already is. I don't think there's any free lunch to be had here: the storage media needs to be viable, and you have to have a recovery strategy that's equally viable as well. EDIT – that being said, "tape as a service" does exist... it's called S3 Glacier.
- UltraSane 9mo ago
  There will be a break even point with S3 Glacier since you have to pay for it forever vs once for your own drive and tapes.
palmotea 9mo ago
> LTO tape exists and should last 30 to 50 years in good storage conditions. Except tape is now rare-bird datacenter thing. Super expensive, and hard to find drives. The nice thing about discs is they're a mass market consumer medium, so drives have (historically) been very readily available, and they typically have backwards compatibility with old formats.

I have a normal PC... I'd love some kind of external tape drive that I can connect with USB-C, or USB-3... But everything is SAS? And no way to convert SAS to SATA? Recommendations?

8fingerlouie 9mo ago
No recommendations, just brings back memories of the “good old days” with QIC-80 tapes and ZIP drives, both of which came with “desktop” in mind. I still have a ZIP drive around with a parallel port connector. I haven’t owned a computer with a parallel port in 20+ years. I probably also have a QIC-80 tape drive around somewhere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter-inch_cartridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter-inch_cartridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_drive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_drive
- bombcar 9mo ago
  SLR100 for life!
- sowbug 9mo ago
  It would be neat if someone resurrected Iomega and launched the 2026 version of the Zip drive for local backup. It'd be something like $200 (same as the original Zip drive) and it would take 20TB WORM tapes that cost $20 each. There would be some kind of horrible limitation, like it would take 2 months 24/7 to actually write 20TB, but it would come with simple software that rapaciously grabbed your whole cloud life and local data, and the tapes would last forever. I just looked, and iomega.com seems to be some kind of malware site. Sad.
UltraSane 9mo ago
The cheapest option is to get a SAS pcie card and a new drive like https://www.ebay.com/itm/198052084090 https://www.ebay.com/itm/198052084090 or try a much cheaper used drive. LTO drives are expensive but they are very well designed and it is the most reliable portable storage format available. Full LTO tapes in a good fire rated safe really provide a fantastic sense of security. The cost of the drive is amortized over the total bytes you store.
- ted_dunning 9mo ago
  Those tapes in a fire rated safe give a sense of security before the fire. After the fire, it is likely that the tapes and the papers in the safe are a pile of ash. Fire-rated safes often don't survive fires especially if you live in wildfire country.
  - UltraSane 9mo ago
    I mean a UL 72 Class 125 rated safe or file cabinet with a 2-hour fire endurance rating
aidenn0 9mo ago
No recommendations, but you can get a thunderbolt to SAS adapter; they aren't cheap though.
geocar 9mo ago
Try searching for thunderbolt lto. I know MagStor has one with usb-c presentation.

8fingerlouie 9mo ago

Assuming you need to “get up and go”, like a refugee situation, what are the chances that you’ll find a drive that can read Blu-ray disks, versus the chances that you’ll find a LTO tape drive ?

aidenn0 9mo ago
Blu-ray drives are fast becoming hard to find, so I'd pack a USB bluray drive with your discs. New computers don't have them and haven't for a few years. I purchased a drive recently and to get a quality drive, I had to go for a NOS pioneer drive, or get another LG, and the LG drives are kid-of shit.
- gambiting 9mo ago
  How exactly are they becoming hard to find? There's literally tens of options for brand new drives I can order for next day delivery on Amazon, and endless choice of second hand options on eBay.

Spooky23 9mo ago

For individuals? No. LTO is enterprise gear that is not suitable for people. If you want to waste alot of time with backups, curate your stuff and get it on optical media. Better yet, print the good stuff on archival papers and ink and stow them securely.

UltraSane 9mo ago
LTO drives are expensive but well within the means of the average programmer or sysadmin. https://www.ebay.com/itm/198052084090 https://www.ebay.com/itm/198052084090 Optical media is an absolutely terrible format for long term archiving.
- ghshephard 9mo ago
  mDisc is an optical format designed, and tested for 100+ years of storage, can be read from a consumer dvd player and cost <$10 a disc.
  - geocar 9mo ago
    LTO9 is like 45TB for <$100 (I got a bunch for €55 a piece), so 4.5TB for <$10 is being generous. And even if you didn't think they lasted 30-40 years and made copies every 3 years, it's still cheaper, not to mention you have fewer tapes to manage. Also: I don't have a bd/dvd player in my house today, so even if there are the most tremendous gains in medical sciences I'm almost certainly not going to have one in 100+ years, so I'm not sure m disc even makes cost-sense for smaller volumes. Maybe if you want to keep your data outside for sunshine like the author of the article, but that's not me...
    - somat 9mo ago
      > Also: I don't have a bd/dvd player in my house today You have just stumbled on the inherent problem with any archival media. You really think you will have a working tape drive after 40 years? Hell, in my experience tape drives are mechanically complex and full of super thin plastic wear surfaces. Do you really expect to have a working tape drive in 10 years? As far as I can tell there is no good way to do long term static digital archives, And in the absence of that you have to depend on dynamic archives, transfer to new media every 5 years. I think to have realistic long term static archives the best method is to only depend on the mark 1 eyeball. find your 100 best pictures, and print them out. identify important data and print it out. Stuff you want to leave to future generations, make sure it is in a form they can read.

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

hakfoo 9mo ago

I'm curious about "good storage conditions". What are the threat models for tape, and how much do they vary for discs? I assume if I leave either in my car in an Arizona summer day, it's toast. But are tapes more prone to mould damage in a damp climate, or media shedding if fed through a slightly out-of-adjustment drive? The problem with M-disc was that it was always a sideshow on the mainstream optical disc market-- like LightScribe/LabelFlash, it was a feature most people weren't interested in except for possibly box-checking during purchase. The main audience was still people buying generic blank discs and burning single use discs or short-term backups. There is/was an opportunity to box the product up with a clear marketing message of "here's a SMB-scale backup solution", something cheaper than tape, and more built-for-purpose than buying USB hard drives and dangling them off the back of a PC. I'm picturing the M-disc technology but each disc is pre-installed in a cartridge to discourage accidental scratches/fingerprints/leaving surfaces directly exposed to the sun. It reinforces the "this is durable and you can probably put legal documents you might need for 5-10-20 years on it and leave it in a safe" story. This also creates a vendor-lockin product at a premium price, while quality conventional CD/DVD media was always competing with "but Fry's has spindles of 500 discs for $12.99!"

UltraSane 9mo ago
Optimal LTO tape storage requires a stable, clean environment, ideally 15°C to 25°C (59°F to 77°F) and 20% to 50% relative humidity (non-condensing), which can preserve data for up to 30 years. Tapes must be stored vertically in their protective plastic cases to prevent sagging and contamination.

nxobject 9mo ago

The tapes? Yes. The hardware, though? I'm not sure I would bet on having compatible hardware to read a particular LTO generation tape, decades from now, given how specialty the hardware already is. I don't think there's any free lunch to be had here: the storage media needs to be viable, and you have to have a recovery strategy that's equally viable as well. EDIT – that being said, "tape as a service" does exist... it's called S3 Glacier.

UltraSane 9mo ago
There will be a break even point with S3 Glacier since you have to pay for it forever vs once for your own drive and tapes.

palmotea 9mo ago

> LTO tape exists and should last 30 to 50 years in good storage conditions. Except tape is now rare-bird datacenter thing. Super expensive, and hard to find drives. The nice thing about discs is they're a mass market consumer medium, so drives have (historically) been very readily available, and they typically have backwards compatibility with old formats.