Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2010/03/24
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Is tape good nowadays? Back in the 80's I used to use QIC drives and tapes on Sun equipment and Motorola SBCs but I never felt comfortable with QIC. They worked, but with a batting average similar to floppy drives. Sometimes they just didn't read, so if something was important, you made 2 backups. Eventually, we got a 9-track 6250 and that was reliable. Years later, I tried Exabyte helicals, and I thought they were pretty fussy, like the QICs. (Nowadays I just back up to files on a USB-mounted drive in a Venus enclosure, but of course, ultimate size of the output file cannot exceed 1.5 or 2 TB. ) -rei On 03/24/2010 06:29 PM, John Nebel wrote: > Spencer, > > The lifetime for LTO4 tapes appears to be 200 complete tape writes, 30 > years storage. Now that LTO5 is available, LTO4 drive prices are > dropping. LTO4 media cost about $30. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTO4 > > John > > Spencer Cheng wrote: >> John, (& Dennis), >> >> Suppose you are a working pro like Tina, Leo or Ted, or..., and you >> have a gazillion digital photos, what > > would you buy for tape backups? Assume that it has to work with a PC > and a Mac, though not at the same time. >> >> How reliable are these tapes? How frequently do they have to be >> replaced? How often do the content have to > > checked? What S/W should they use? Is there a recommended backup > schedule? >> >> I've came across cases where the tape drive was flakey and the tape >> was blank. I also seen tape drive s/w > > that generates hundreds of (transient?) errors when I worked for a > small company and we used tapes for backups. >> >> More fodder for the wiki but I think this is useful information to >> capture because once one data needs > > exceed 2TB, commodity NASes becomes a bit of a dead end. Even my home > brew NAS becomes less useful once it > > gets to >3TB. Having a stack of NASes is no better than a stack of > external disks (or a very large stack of DVD-R). >> >> Regards, >> Spencer >> >> On Mar 24, 2010, at 12:52, John Nebel wrote: >> [...] >>> Relevant to the LUG: Given the high value of photographic images, >>> and low cost of media and a PC internal tape drive, tape archiving >>> is cost-effective. There can be many backup copies and tapes may be >>> kept in multiple locations. >>> >>> Disk redundancy is essential, but one must do both. >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Leica Users Group. >> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information