[geeks] tape backup, revisited

[Phil Stracchino]

Doug McLaren wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 16, 2007 at 02:48:34PM -0500, Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:
> 
> | >> I just posted about the Quantum GoVault, but I misread the media cost.
> | >> It's $104 each, not $14 like I thought.  Damn, I knew it was too good to
> | >> be true.
> | >
> | > You can *almost* buy 500G SATA drives for $104 nowdays.
> | 
> | Funny how things keep repeating.  We're nearly back to the age of using
> | removable disk packs for near-line storage.
> 
> What do you mean *almost* ?  We've been there for years.
> 
> Pay a little extra for a USB enclosure for that drive, and you've got
> an external backup solution that's really fast, gives random access,
> and doesn't require $1000+ tape drives.  If you're on a budget, you
> can skip the USB enclosure, but it's convenient to not be pulling
> drives out of enclosures.
> 
> And the media is cheaper than anything I'm aware of short of DVD-Rs
> (and 4.5 GB/pop is hard to deal with.)  Are there *any* tape solutions
> where you can get 500 GB of media for $110?

I can buy a reconditioned 100GB (uncompressed) LTO-1 tape for about $20,
or brand new for $24.  That meets your "500GB for $110" criterion within
acceptable tolerance ($100 for five reconditioned tapes, $120 for five
new), and it'll stand up to physical abuse (being dropped, say) much
better than a disk.



-- 
        Phil Stracchino                CDK#2
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 phil.stracchino at speakeasy.net   alaric at caerllewys.net
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