Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2010/03/24
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Spencer, The lifetime for LTO4 tapes appears to be 200 complete tape writes, 30 years storage. Now that LTO5 is available, LTO4 drive prices are dropping. LTO4 media cost about $30. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTO4 John Spencer Cheng wrote: > John, (& Dennis), > > Suppose you are a working pro like Tina, Leo or Ted, or..., and you have a > gazillion digital photos, what would you buy for tape backups? Assume that it has to work with a PC and a Mac, though not at the same time. > > How reliable are these tapes? How frequently do they have to be replaced? > How often do the content have to checked? What S/W should they use? Is there a recommended backup schedule? > > I've came across cases where the tape drive was flakey and the tape was > blank. I also seen tape drive s/w that generates hundreds of (transient?) errors when I worked for a small company and we used tapes for backups. > > More fodder for the wiki but I think this is useful information to capture > because once one data needs exceed 2TB, commodity NASes becomes a bit of a dead end. Even my home brew NAS becomes less useful once it gets to >3TB. Having a stack of NASes is no better than a stack of external disks (or a very large stack of DVD-R). > > Regards, > Spencer > > On Mar 24, 2010, at 12:52, John Nebel wrote: > [...] >> Relevant to the LUG: Given the high value of photographic images, and >> low cost of media and a PC internal tape drive, tape archiving is >> cost-effective. There can be many backup copies and tapes may be kept in >> multiple locations. >> >> Disk redundancy is essential, but one must do both. > > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information