[geeks] tape backup, revisited

[Phil Stracchino]

Phil Stracchino wrote:
> Doug McLaren wrote:
>> 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.

Actually, I just checked, and LTO-2 is even better ...  brand new 200GB
(uncompressed) LTO-2 tapes can be had for $35.  That's $175 per terabyte
for LTO-2 tape, compared to $220 per terabyte for disk at your quoted
price point.

...And in fact, I just found LTO-2 tapes for $28 at another vendor
($140/terabyte) and LTO-3 tapes (400GB native capacity, uncompressed)
for $45, which is about $112.50 per terabyte.  And the vendor offers
volume discounts off *that*.


-- 
        Phil Stracchino                CDK#2
 Renaissance Man, Unix ronin, Perl hacker, Free Stater
 phil.stracchino at speakeasy.net   alaric at caerllewys.net
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