On Thu, Jan 03, 2008 at 11:40:44PM -0800, Ted Unangst wrote: > On 1/3/08, Douglas A. Tutty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I thought that there was a trend in the industry away from tapes toward > > hard-drive-based systems, e.g. virtual tape libraries that are basically > > large file servers with far more capacity than throughput. If bitrot is > > a serious concern, perhaps they have a way to monitor the condition of > > the drives. > > there's a difference between archives and backups. videos of the poop > factory learning to walk need to be archived until the end of time. a > receipt for your tuna sandwich needs to be backed up until the taxman > cometh. in most cases, your data doesn't need to be rapture ready.
I like "poop factory" :) So if videos of George need to be kept until the end of time: Videos used to be on tape. Tape keeps a long time. Now videos are digital. Are we suggesting that to keep our digital videos of George we need to go out and buy a DLT to store our digital videos of George? Is this progress or what! I know that DLTs are good for a long time on the shelf. How well do tapes written with one drive read on another? Presuably, drives don't last for 30 years. I don't have room in my bank safety deposit box to put a spare DLT so if disaster strikes, I'll be buying a replacement drive to use with my old tapes. How robust are the drives? How well do they age? In other words, is buying one off eBay a safe bet? I can't afford a new one. Then there's practical matters of living in Canada: most stuff on eBay comes from the USA. Theres a nasty border between us. Eventhough the dollar is abour par and we have NAFTA, there is still the VISA card exchange rate, customs brokers charge a fee, and its been reported recently that if customs needs to search a truck, the charge through the roof and pass that fee as a surcharge onto the importers. All-in-all, while everyting can go smoothly, it can also go poorly. Anybody know of a good cheap DLT in Canada? Doug.
