Poll; Tape drives

[Julian C. Dunn]

On Thu, 28 Feb 2008, Lennart Sorensen wrote:

>> I still use tapes. My home backup system is a DLT7000 drive, whose tapes
>> I take off-site (to the office). That said, I do realize that for most
>> home users, tape is exorbitantly expensive. I got this system
>> second-hand and if I had to buy all the tapes again at $40 apiece (new)
>> the media would cost me $600 alone -- enough to buy 10 hard disks.
>>
>> Tape is still good for enterprise use though and I don't see it going
>> away there.
>
> If you look at what companies like quantum are doing, it seems they are
> all getting into harddisk based backup systems.  Tape simply costs too
> much and isn't reliable enough to justify anymore.

I have to challenge your assertion that it "isn't reliable enough to 
justify". Tape will last you decades if it's properly stored. Plus, unlike 
keeping a pile of disks powered on, there are no operational costs in 
terms of power, cooling, etc. If you have terabytes (or even petabytes) of 
data, it is not economical to back up to disks especially if that data is 
infrequently accessed.

It's true that virtual tape library technology is becoming very attractive 
and many companies are implementing it, but ultimately, that data does
(and ought to) get written to tape.

- Julian

[ Julian C. Dunn <jdunn-JN5fZfbfKAtWk0Htik3J/w at public.gmane.org>  *  "You can throw confetti,   ]
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