4 ms·

They should've kept the archives in their intern's car, like the State of Ohio did https://www.newson6.com/story/5e3687772f69d76f6209d656/tape-stolen-from-inte

They should've kept the archives in their intern's car, like the State of Ohio did https://www.newson6.com/story/5e3687772f69d76f6209d656/tape-stolen-from-interns-car-had-information-on-225000-taxpayers https://www.newson6.com/story/5e3687772f69d76f6209d656/tape-...

QuantumNomad_ 2mo ago
This good old quote comes to mind: Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway. — Andrew S. Tanenbaum Cram a few 12 TB drives into that sucker and you’ve got all the storage you need for their whole 50 TB archive.
- annzabelle 2mo ago
  I'm not sure about currently, but up until very recently, the IRS did offsite backups by sending trucks full of tapes down the interstate.
  - fragmede 2mo ago
    ...how else would you do it? The Internet is only so fast and if you don't care about latency that's what you'd do.
    - annzabelle 2mo ago
      I guess I found the storage medium dated. Though, my understanding is that certain kinds of tapes are much better for true archival storage than HDDs or SSDs.
      - toast0 2mo ago
        Plenty of modern tapes. LTO-10 came out last year with 30TB tapes and 40TB tapes came out Jan 2026. IBM has a propetary tape system with 50TB in a slightly larger format, that came out in 2023. The drives are spendy, but $/TB on media is lower than anything else. 30-50TB tapes are still pretty expensive, but so is all storage these days (I hadn't really looked in a while, yikes)
        unsnap_biceps 2mo ago
        Tape prices are lower, but the drive cost is very outsized. The cheapest drive on B&H is $13,584.05
        Dylan16807 2mo ago
        The cheapest LTO-10 drive. They have LTO-8 drives for less than half that price. And LTO-8 tapes are significantly cheaper per TB because they're not brand new. For some reason they also have an LTO-5 drive for $1200 and tapes for $20/TB. Which looks a lot better today in a comparison with hard drives than it did a year ago.
        toast0 2mo ago
        Yeah, I said they're spendy... But if you're filling trucks with tapes, the cost of the drive(s) will amortize pretty well.

QuantumNomad_ 2mo ago

This good old quote comes to mind: Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway. — Andrew S. Tanenbaum Cram a few 12 TB drives into that sucker and you’ve got all the storage you need for their whole 50 TB archive.

annzabelle 2mo ago
I'm not sure about currently, but up until very recently, the IRS did offsite backups by sending trucks full of tapes down the interstate.
- fragmede 2mo ago
  ...how else would you do it? The Internet is only so fast and if you don't care about latency that's what you'd do.
  - annzabelle 2mo ago
    I guess I found the storage medium dated. Though, my understanding is that certain kinds of tapes are much better for true archival storage than HDDs or SSDs.
    - toast0 2mo ago
      Plenty of modern tapes. LTO-10 came out last year with 30TB tapes and 40TB tapes came out Jan 2026. IBM has a propetary tape system with 50TB in a slightly larger format, that came out in 2023. The drives are spendy, but $/TB on media is lower than anything else. 30-50TB tapes are still pretty expensive, but so is all storage these days (I hadn't really looked in a while, yikes)
      - unsnap_biceps 2mo ago
        Tape prices are lower, but the drive cost is very outsized. The cheapest drive on B&H is $13,584.05
        Dylan16807 2mo ago
        The cheapest LTO-10 drive. They have LTO-8 drives for less than half that price. And LTO-8 tapes are significantly cheaper per TB because they're not brand new. For some reason they also have an LTO-5 drive for $1200 and tapes for $20/TB. Which looks a lot better today in a comparison with hard drives than it did a year ago.
        toast0 2mo ago
        Yeah, I said they're spendy... But if you're filling trucks with tapes, the cost of the drive(s) will amortize pretty well.