Backup for pros

Amadex

Haha, anyone tried this? Fuji® LTO Ultrium 4 Data Cartridge, 800 GB/1600 GB Capacity, 12.65 mm, 820 m

$9.98

MikeA

Aren't tape devices themselves super expensive?

You can get a same capacity HDD super cheap.

Amadex

@MikeA said:
Aren't tape devices themselves super expensive?

You can get a same capacity HDD super cheap.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/tape-storage-cheaper-and-less-polluting-than-hdds-ssds-research

terrorgen

correctly classifying and sorting your cold data takes “time, money, and effort,”

It's easier to dump everything on a hard drive.

And there is a human factor of "what if I need this 5 years down the road"?

havoc

@MikeA said:
Aren't tape devices themselves super expensive?

You can get a same capacity HDD super cheap.

Yes, though I believe it depends how manual it is. i.e. you get tape drives that can switch between catridges themselves etc

CamoYoshi

@terrorgen said:

correctly classifying and sorting your cold data takes “time, money, and effort,”

It's easier to dump everything on a hard drive.

And there is a human factor of "what if I need this 5 years down the road"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_Tape_File_System

This makes tapes more flexible, though any deleted content doesn't free up space, so eventually you have to format the tape to regain your free space. Also the downsides of average seek times is still a factor.

Basically, if you want to use tapes, you need to have a lot of them so you can move the data off one tape and onto another to be able to format a tape to regain your free space.

rcy026

Tapes actually do still exists and are maybe not widely used but not so uncommon as one might think.
When you get into government/military or big financial some of them actually demand data to be stored on tape for some certification reasons or whatever. Also, when it gets really serious there are tape libraries that actually puts the tapes into fireproof safes automatically each night or ship them away off-site.

skorous

@rcy026 said:
When you get into government/military or big financial some of them actually demand data to be stored on tape for some certification reasons or whatever. Also, when it gets really serious there are tape libraries that actually puts the tapes into fireproof safes automatically each night or ship them away off-site.

Yeah, ours didn't do it automatically. It put them into a case but a human had to walk them down to the driver for delivery to the DR site.

somik

Also I believe it's one of the best methods for long term storage. Question is, do you need a long term storage media that will cost thousands to get the reader/writer and take hours to save data or is regular hard drives fine? If you have a lot of storage, tapes are cheaper. For 10 or 20 TB, hard drives are definitely cheaper.

Amadex

@somik said:
Also I believe it's one of the best methods for long term storage. Question is, do you need a long term storage media that will cost thousands to get the reader/writer and take hours to save data or is regular hard drives fine? If you have a lot of storage, tapes are cheaper. For 10 or 20 TB, hard drives are definitely cheaper.

Tape speed is 300 mb / sec

somik

@Amadex said:

@somik said:
Also I believe it's one of the best methods for long term storage. Question is, do you need a long term storage media that will cost thousands to get the reader/writer and take hours to save data or is regular hard drives fine? If you have a lot of storage, tapes are cheaper. For 10 or 20 TB, hard drives are definitely cheaper.

Tape speed is 300 mb / sec

Existing enterprise and mid-range tape drives typically transfer data at about 100 - 150 MB/s. Compression ratios up to 2:1 are often achieved in these systems so that performance increases to 200 – 300 MB/s.

LTO4 is about 800GB/1.6TB rated, but in reality you are lucky to get 1.1 TB of data written to a tape, WITH COMPRESSION.
LTO5 is about 1.5TB/3TB rated, but would fill at about 2.1 TB (database and smaller files would get much less on a tape)

The cost is about $65.00 per tape and they come in a pack of 20 as minimum, which is $1,300 in tapes.

The reader/writer costs between $2000 and $5000 (lets say $3000) and since you do not have a SAS controller, that's another $200 for it.

So for a 60TB storage capacity, you will be paying approximately $4,500 for tape storage.

Tapes require special conditions for long term storage. Humid environments causes fungus to grow on the tapes (or tape rot) so factor in the room, electricity and dehumidifier costs as well.

Btw, read here for more info: https://www.simplstor.com/index.php/platform/whitepapers/14-real-cost-of-tape

AuroraZero

You punks stay away from my tape drives!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!