[TriLUG] OT: long term storage

[Jeremy Portzer]

On Fri, 23 Aug 2002, Ryan Wheaton wrote:

>     And, in the back of my head I've thought about magnetic tape.  My
> only concern with the tape is access times...  Exactly how fast are the
> new tape drives? (i saw a LVD one for sale on CDW.  It seems that, if
> the read/write times on tapes is decent, then it would be the best
> solution.  Tapes are cheap, the media is durable, and they can hold a
> buttload of data.

I use a networked DDS-4 tape drive to back up my servers.  It's reasonably 
fast; probably not as fast as burning a CD, but you can set-and-forget.   
Since DDS-4 holds 20GB, you don't have to change tapes very much at all.   
Why are you concerned with access speed for long-term storage?  Except for 
the issue of changing tapes, you can just start the backup process, and 
come back when it's done!

--Jeremy