tape drives

I've noticed that most tape drives go for outrageous prices. Like most are over $400.
This is outrageous some go up to $1000 easily depending on capacity. It seems to me that is would almost be cheaper to buy a bunch of cheap ide hard drives and make them hot swapable. Wouldn't this even be more realiabe than most tapes? I don't understand why tape drives cost so much, I guess it is the reliability you are paying for (even though it's still a tape). I mean not only are the drives expensive on some of these tape drives.... but the tapes are also outrageous. If i were setting up a new server i would seriously look into just backing up to hard drives. If anyone has any thoughts on this plz tell me.

i just picked up a 40GB USB HD, configured on all clients, and i copied all install files to different folders of disk + key code or whatever certain files to install properly. when i need to install on a new puter, i use the USB. OS needs to be on disk though as the drivers are on it, er, i havent gotten it to work yet...

but yeah, methinks external USB or firewire HD are the way to go. more bang for your buck.

Well, you'll mostly find tape drives/cartridges in large companies - and there'll be plenty there - THOUSANDS!!

Large organizations need ridiculous amounts of storage, so they need a HUGE amount of tapes. Hard Drives, like the ones me and you use at home, are mainly for personal use. We usually just have one, or two.

These large organizations have mainframes and SILO's that manages these tape drives/cartridges so that you can access the data in them quickly. I've recently been told that the monthly maintenance fee for ONE of these SILO's (which can hold about 5,000 cartridges) is about AUD$40,000. That's a whopping amount of cash.

So yeah, I guess basically the HIGH price of these tape drives would come down to reliability. I mean with so much of these things, you'd want to be assured that they are very reliable, cos you wouldn't want any problems with losing data, especially with large organizations, such as banks.

But yeah, even so, the prices are ridiculous. I mean my friend just bought an 80GB hard drive for AUD$230. One of these Imation tape drives/cartridges, which stored 20GB (but had a possibility or storing 80GB when compressed) cost something like AUD$250 or more.

Greg

Also a lot of new mother boards support raid on IDE. So grab a couple of HDD and mirror them...........

It's a lot cheaper than SCSI raid or tape drives.

Another option would be (I'm assuming that you're going to run your server on a network?) to get a network attached storage (NAS) server. I know that Linksys had a fairly inexpensive (50 GB?) hard drive which would simply be plugged into a network switch and was available for sharing. I can't find the product on their site, though... but I know that there are other companies which offer similar solutions, though I remember Linksys being relatively inexpensive.

My current server has drive hot-swapping, so I simply place a SCSI hard disk into one of the bays and my computer automatically updates and and all files that were changed, giving me an up-to-date backup which I can store at a remote location, were anything to happen to my server or at the physical location of the server.

I wouldn't necessarily go with querty's suggestion of a USB or Firewire HD for a server, just for the fact that it'll be hard to get it to work without having an OS already installed (though, with the server, you could simply do remote installs, completely negating the reason behind the drive).

Just my 2 cents.

AJ

There's also the issue of archiving... Would you archive (ie: store) hundreds of ide drives? How about backup scheduling... There's no such thing as a HD loader/library! Tapes still offer much conveniance for backup purposes, with capacities between 40 up to 100 gig (80/200 compressed), small size (easy handling)...

Ammo

For serious backup needs, tape libraries are required. We just put in an RP8400 (HP minidome), an L2000, and an N-class and we two 10/180 Ultrium libraries for both pairs (8400 on one, L/N on the other). Ultrium LTO drives are insane as far as pricing is concerned and the tapes are a hefty 400ish bucks apiece but the capacity is 200gb native, 400gb compressed and that's the kind of storage you need for Oracle 11i applications/etc.

Funny how you need so much for oracle yet for your system, a DDS3 drive would do fine and even that stores 20gb native.

$400 to $1000?? Where the heck are you shopping.

http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.asp?EDC=296525

I just bought 2 of these in January.


As for the question of tapes being good for certain things...definately having 30 days worth of backups is great. You can go back and get that one file that somebody really needs that they didn't realize they deleted 3 weeks ago.


Yes, usb hd's and stuff would work ok on file servers, but imagine trying to back up a MS Exchange private directory store that's almost 20 gigs every night, plus the 30 gigs of files from the fileserver, plus all the OS's of all the servers....it's just really not that nice to be doing with a little usb drive.

yes. i think i have been properly cowed.

you guys are right. UBS works just fine for the little things, but my scale was a little off last night.

expensive, but auto tape loaders for DDS would be easier to handle and i said before and avdven pointed out again, you need to have the OS already installed, which is a real pain.

i rescind my former statement. :p

Carrying a stack of lightweight tapes in a flameproof lock box offsite (for proper data protection) is a LOT easier then carrying that same box full of heavy ass harddrives....

along this line..sort of...i've got a meeting with a guy from the telco tomorrow and he's going to try and sell me remote offsite backup services...we have about 10gig uncompressed data and i forecast about 3/4 gig/month growth for the next year. anyone have any experience with offsite services?...obviously there's some upside...(just ask amex and morgan stanley) but there's also security concerns..

any thoughts???

zigar,

Is this going to be your primary system or a secondary system?

Either way, I'd ask the telco to provide some sort of security audit of their systems, preferrably from a third party.

I'm not really a fan of offsite storage, but if the whole place goes down in flames it might be a good idea.

I am debating doing offsite storage for my tapes, but seeing as I'm out in the country I guess my only decent option would be a bank box?

I've got the fireproof safe and all, I just want that additional security as well.