3 ms·

Speaking of backup solutions, why don't we ever see pro-sumer priced tape drives? The technology behind capable LTO drives is now more than 10 years old, should

by amelius 7mo ago

Speaking of backup solutions, why don't we ever see pro-sumer priced tape drives? The technology behind capable LTO drives is now more than 10 years old, shouldn't we see some reductions in price now? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_Tape-Open https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_Tape-Open

deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
fractallyte 7mo ago
VHS video cassettes could be used as tape drives! There was this, from the same era: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArVid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArVid And I have this for my Amiga, also same era: http://www.hugolyppens.com/VBS.html http://www.hugolyppens.com/VBS.html
- TMWNN 7mo ago
  How reliable did you find VBS?
  - fractallyte 7mo ago
    Unfortunately, I never got around to using it! I bought it with high hopes, but my Zip disks turned out to be so convenient and spacious that the VHS-backup need never arose. That said, it's not too late... I still have my Amiga system in storage, and a VHS recorder.
    - TMWNN 7mo ago
      >I bought it with high hopes, but my Zip disks turned out to be so convenient and spacious that the VHS-backup need never arose. It's good to hear, in retrospect, that you were able to use a storage medium that did not even exist when Amiga were discontinued. Which type of interface for the Zip drive works with it? (It occurs to me that Zip disks presumably offer the great virtue, otherwise absent as I understand it for Amigans, of PC compatibility.)
      - fractallyte 7mo ago
        An Amiga 4000T with a SCSI interface, and the SCSI Zip drive worked perfectly with it – I could even boot the Amiga from a Zip disk! However, since the Zip disks were formatted with an Amiga file system – I used PFS3 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_File_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_File_System) – they couldn't be used with a PC. I'm curious whether the data is still readable, after 30 years...
traceroute66 7mo ago
> why don't we ever see pro-sumer priced tape drives? The technology behind capable LTO drives is now more than 10 years old, shouldn't we see some reductions in price now First, LTO drives are conceptually simple, but if you've ever opened one up you'll know they are a feat of horribly complex engineering. Second, they are not a commodity product. Infact thanks to the magic cloud they are even LESS of a commodity product than they were 10 years ago because lots of people have either wholesale moved to the cloud or use S3 for backup. 1 + 2 = Low volume product with lots of parts crammed into it = high manufacturing cost = high price. The orgs who still use LTO in their infra are the sort of orgs who don't blink at the price tag. The cost of the CTO's farts is probably more than a 5k tape drive.
- amelius 7mo ago
  > Second, they are not a commodity product. Are you sure, there's millions of small-to-medium businesses that could use a good and cheap backup solution for terabytes of data.
  - traceroute66 7mo ago
    > millions of small-to-medium businesses that could use a good and cheap backup solution for terabytes of data. Yes, and that's exactly how small-to-medium business IT used to operate. These days sadly most small-to-medium businesses are drinking the cloud koolaid. You would be hard pushed to find a small-biz with a comms room these days, when back in the day every half-decent small-biz office would have a comms room with cab and a few servers in it. Now most small-biz are on Microsoft or Gmail for mail and their office is full of laptops on WiFi.... nobody has any respect for good old-fashioned structured cabling these days either, sadly. ;( It is what it is, sadly. Hence only governments, enterprises and, ironically (if rumours are correct) the cloud providers (for their archival S3 products) are still buying tape.
  - mingus88 7mo ago
    Backup to NAS is a much better solution for a SMB My experience with tape is very out of date but I doubt much has changed due to the nature of tape Tape software sucks. Tape restores are cumbersome. A SMB can literally but a multi TB HDD and just drag and drop, and but the drive in a safe. A SMB will need to hire someone who wants to deal with this niche tape storage, and why would they bother if they can use a NAS for that and a dozen other things at the same time Tapes can have a shelf life of 30 years. If you need archival storage then tape is a great solution. For everybody else it’s more trouble than it’s worth.

by amelius 7mo ago

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

fractallyte 7mo ago

VHS video cassettes could be used as tape drives! There was this, from the same era: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArVid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArVid And I have this for my Amiga, also same era: http://www.hugolyppens.com/VBS.html http://www.hugolyppens.com/VBS.html

TMWNN 7mo ago
How reliable did you find VBS?
- fractallyte 7mo ago
  Unfortunately, I never got around to using it! I bought it with high hopes, but my Zip disks turned out to be so convenient and spacious that the VHS-backup need never arose. That said, it's not too late... I still have my Amiga system in storage, and a VHS recorder.
  - TMWNN 7mo ago
    >I bought it with high hopes, but my Zip disks turned out to be so convenient and spacious that the VHS-backup need never arose. It's good to hear, in retrospect, that you were able to use a storage medium that did not even exist when Amiga were discontinued. Which type of interface for the Zip drive works with it? (It occurs to me that Zip disks presumably offer the great virtue, otherwise absent as I understand it for Amigans, of PC compatibility.)
    - fractallyte 7mo ago
      An Amiga 4000T with a SCSI interface, and the SCSI Zip drive worked perfectly with it – I could even boot the Amiga from a Zip disk! However, since the Zip disks were formatted with an Amiga file system – I used PFS3 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_File_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_File_System) – they couldn't be used with a PC. I'm curious whether the data is still readable, after 30 years...

traceroute66 7mo ago

> why don't we ever see pro-sumer priced tape drives? The technology behind capable LTO drives is now more than 10 years old, shouldn't we see some reductions in price now First, LTO drives are conceptually simple, but if you've ever opened one up you'll know they are a feat of horribly complex engineering. Second, they are not a commodity product. Infact thanks to the magic cloud they are even LESS of a commodity product than they were 10 years ago because lots of people have either wholesale moved to the cloud or use S3 for backup. 1 + 2 = Low volume product with lots of parts crammed into it = high manufacturing cost = high price. The orgs who still use LTO in their infra are the sort of orgs who don't blink at the price tag. The cost of the CTO's farts is probably more than a 5k tape drive.

amelius 7mo ago
> Second, they are not a commodity product. Are you sure, there's millions of small-to-medium businesses that could use a good and cheap backup solution for terabytes of data.
- traceroute66 7mo ago
  > millions of small-to-medium businesses that could use a good and cheap backup solution for terabytes of data. Yes, and that's exactly how small-to-medium business IT used to operate. These days sadly most small-to-medium businesses are drinking the cloud koolaid. You would be hard pushed to find a small-biz with a comms room these days, when back in the day every half-decent small-biz office would have a comms room with cab and a few servers in it. Now most small-biz are on Microsoft or Gmail for mail and their office is full of laptops on WiFi.... nobody has any respect for good old-fashioned structured cabling these days either, sadly. ;( It is what it is, sadly. Hence only governments, enterprises and, ironically (if rumours are correct) the cloud providers (for their archival S3 products) are still buying tape.
- mingus88 7mo ago
  Backup to NAS is a much better solution for a SMB My experience with tape is very out of date but I doubt much has changed due to the nature of tape Tape software sucks. Tape restores are cumbersome. A SMB can literally but a multi TB HDD and just drag and drop, and but the drive in a safe. A SMB will need to hire someone who wants to deal with this niche tape storage, and why would they bother if they can use a NAS for that and a dozen other things at the same time Tapes can have a shelf life of 30 years. If you need archival storage then tape is a great solution. For everybody else it’s more trouble than it’s worth.