Storage @ Work

Who says we are using tape? Perhaps, if you mean the 2000-vintage StorageTek drive lying around because it's too bulky to haul away, but decommissioned because we were getting tired of replacing one of four DLT drives once a month on average...

Disk is the new tape...

I don't think disk (and certainly not SSD) makes sense for large scale archive type situations. But I think most organizations are bringing disk in some area of their backup process. But tape is like the black knight from Monty Python and Holy Grail, "I'm not dead yet, it's just a flesh wound, I've had worse..."

I was a product manager once upon a time for a tape product Every single device failed in the field. Not 50%, not 75%, not even 90% failure rates.... 100% failure rate! There weren't enough units to get to five-nines land. Talk about pain. The whole business was horrible.

OK, enough of that, one of the other things I use tape (the sticky kind) for is removing lint. Why just the other night I unembroidered a black EqualLogic shirt so I could get that total black look required for my church choir (Good Friday service). The embroidery threads created an unholy mess of static silvery fuzz all over the shirt. Used duct tape to get clean room results.

We also use the tape player in one of our cars to play iPod audio through. Its one of those tapeless magnetic wheel players that makes it sound like crushed gravel is gouging the capstans and heads. It doesn't matter much if we wreck it because our old audio tapes are all fried to smithereens anyway.

I have an old system in my garage, (http://blip.tv/file/275902/) that has a DAT drive in one of the bays. Hasn't been used in years. I think a gerbil or something has squatters rights in it. My cat keeps trying to paw something out of it - as if she's trying to overcome the heartache of data loss.

If you look at LTO4 (for example), with 800GB native capacity per tape, and a rated speed of 120MB/sec. You need to have a non-entry level SAN to achieve those speeds and capacities.

For branch offices, tape is still a winner unless you have fast links. And even in the data center, you can use tape for archival purposes. I'd still be willing to rely on a properly stored tape lasting a lot longer than a disk.

I can't tell you why people still use tape except that it's what they've always used.

I can tell you that Dell won't kill it with the RD1000 at £200 ($400) for a 160GB cartridge when an external 2.5" 160GB USB drive costs £60 ($120).

Drives and Internet based backups will kill tape, but it'll take a very cheap generic shock protection chassis that any manufacturer can sign up to along the lines of DDS to do it.

Ken, I guess the key with tape is the proper storage of them. Slightly refrigerated and dry. This makes everything better for tape. The new LTO speeds are definitely impressive. Do you happen to know the wear-out characteristics (pass count) for LTO?

Ewen, The last USB hard drive I used for backup was a 500GB drive that cost $75 at Fry's - on sale. I also have a Firewire enclosure that accepts PATA drives, which are now unbelievably inexpensive and huge, as you know. The thing I don't like about that approach is storing the drives when they aren't in the enclosure. If I were doing this for anybody else but me, I'd probably have them pay the extra money for the impact-resistant RD 1000 cartridge.

Marc,

In response to your question about the durability of LTO, according to the Wikipedia entry for LTO...

Tape durability - Estimated

* 1.2 million passes (NOTE: many passes are required to fill up a tape)
* 30 years of archival storage
* 20,000 loads and unloads

(Note each bullet above has a "citation needed" tag on Wikipedia)