Tapes are still the lowest cost, reliable method for backups and archiving.
I've heard about issues with DLT's but never experienced any problems with
them.
The Travan drives are no longer produced, and they had a poorly designed
spindle/band mechanism that failed within a year in most cases...
The 1/4inch drives worked really well until the amount to backup hit around
10GB. They were just too slow.
DDS drives work well, but are not as fast as DLT and LTO drives.
When you have less than about 15-20GB, the DDS drives can do a backup and
verify in a reasonable time.
(and you can get the 20/40 DDS and related Adaptec controllers on the cheap
on EBay...)
Larger amounts push you into the DLT/LTO market so you can keep the backup
process under 6 hours.
The last LTO we installed was 800GB native and we estimate it could backup
and verify the native amount in less than 6 hours.
** Make Sure You Have "mt setblk 0" for DLT/LTO and most DDS drives or they
will run slowly **
** If the blocksize is set to 512 (the default at boot), they seek, seek,
seek,... instead of stream... **
To avoid the costs like you encounter with Iron Mountain, we set up a
relationship with another company in another state and provide offsite
backup services for each other's clients. (rsync or Sentinel). That solves
the client's question, "What if we have a local catastrophe like an
earthquake?" with more reasonable pricing.
Enjoy!
Larry
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