We just procured a new Overland LTO-6 library this year at work so I can tell you from direct experience that tape is not dead! Although direct-to-disk and to-tape backup cost has more or less converged from a price standpoint, there are still some nice aspects of tape ... you get practically infinite storage in a finite number of rack units ... you don't need to keep whole racks of disks on the data center floor, powered up; they're more conducive to off-site archival and so on.
I've tried to use tape at home mostly as a backup media at least a few times ... with DAT, with QIC ... with 8 mm ... and of course I've played with the older DEC cartridge tapes i.e. TK50/TK70 ... never had much luck with them ... I think the transports are pretty "used up" by the time they get to me ... I still do have a few TK50 drives, a DAT and a QIC ... I don't have much media left ... a few TK50 cartridges and a box of QIC tapes where the rollers have turned to goop ... It would be a hoot to get a 9-track in here someday to play with but I wouldn't want to spend a whole lot of dough on it ... So, I think tape has bright prospects both in production IT as well as in the hobbyist environment yet :O Best, Sean On Mon, Sep 14, 2015 at 6:38 PM, Johnny Billquist <b...@update.uu.se> wrote: > On 2015-09-14 20:43, Murray McCullough wrote: > >> I came across a fascinating article by Evan Koblentz in TechRepublic >> Daily Digest today entitled: “Tape isn't dying -- it's getting >> healthier and smarter”. Does this mean my ADAM tape drive system has a >> future after all? Naw! But one can wish. Are there tape systems in the >> PDP family, et. al., still running? >> >> Happy computing. >> >> Murray :) >> > > Can't answer in general, but my PDP-11/93 have a DDS-3, an Exabyte and a > TK50 running. > > Update have a couple of PDP-11/70 systems, and have tape drives on them, > although our TU81 currently seems dead. > > Johnny > > -- > Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus > || on a psychedelic trip > email: b...@softjar.se || Reading murder books > pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol >
