Did you remember to backup?

[Nick Meyers]

[Brett Sherman] “And I won’t get into why I think LTO storage is a really shortsighted, awful idea in most cases.”

Given the nature of this forum i’d say go for it!
I’d be interested to hear your take on it.

nick

[Brett Sherman]

While the data on tape may be solid and long-lasting, access to that data is not necessarily so. Accessing the data on the tape takes specialized and relatively rare hardware. And LTO usage is already dropping off. At some point in the not too distant future solid state storage and cloud storage is going to take over everything. Manufacturing of LTO drives will stop because it will not be economically viable. Because it’s mechanical, existing devices will start to fail. And drivers will likely not be continued to be updated.

Secondly, because it stores data in a linear fashion, the storing of the data requires software. And retrieving the data requires the same software. In 20 years you have the possibility that the software won’t be around. So you’ll have a bunch of data on the tape, but difficulty accessing it.

People will say but hard drives are not reliable for long-term storage. And it is true that if you just want to make one copy, set it on a shelf and never think about it again then hard drives are not a good solution. But my point is no “set it on a shelf and forget about it” strategy is a real backup strategy. Hard drives are universally accessible. Data formats are standard. And will be supported much longer after they are abandoned. For example, IDE drives were abandoned about 15 years ago. But you can buy brand new IDE to USB adapters. And you have your choice of about 20 different ones.

But what about the costs? Isn’t that more expensive? Probably. But that LTO drive and the tapes required are not cheap either. And if you have to hire someone to retrieve your data that’s going to be exceedingly pricey. And how long are you really going to trust that LTO backup? 20 years? Time is going to be hard on LTO tapes too. Hard drive replacement is maybe slightly over twice as frequent. And guarantees real-time access to the data.