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Thread: tape backup drives?

  1. #1
    Greco101
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    Default tape backup drives?

    http://sandiego.craigslist.org/sys/448196800.html

    Although I'm 99.9% sure it's not 140TBs... lol... I'm pretty sure this is a sweet deal if it is in fact in 100% working order. Should I go for it? How do these things work?

    I found this: http://www.foxtec.com/products/view.asp?ID=4537

  2. #2
    ATX Mental Case alexanderH's Avatar
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    Default Re: tape backup drives?

    wtf? Since when do they make tape drives that store 104 TB? I guess under compression they can get into terabytes but 104 is too little for his business?
    "Provides 800 GB storage physical capacity (1.6 TB with 2:1 compression)"
    IBM drives do that, and those are the biggest storage tapes I have seen before.
    The relatively unknown storage is taking back all the GB's I guess
    Interesting find Greco
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  3. #3
    Spam Sniper SgtM's Avatar
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    Default Re: tape backup drives?

    Based on the price alone.. no. I've never been a big fan of tapes, and he's not selling the backup software to go along with it. Even the storage capacity sucks. It's only 140 Gb (or 280 Gb with 2:1 compression)You could get a 500 Gb drive and external enclosure for cheaper. I have a 250 Gb drive with all my stuff on it. If my main drive crashes, the most I'll lose is a couple E-mail addresses.

  4. #4
    Greco101
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    Default Re: tape backup drives?

    Exactly... Why the hell would anyone spend thousands of dollars for 600GBs? There must be something to them besides being able to store stuff.

    anyone know what's so special about these things? Why in the HELL are they so expensive and WHY would anyone, business or no business, buy one?

    EDIT:: From what I've read so far, they are pretty much only beneficial for backing up data bases for businesses and such considering you are suppose to back up once a week. It's pretty bad ass that they take little tapes that can easily be dated and put away. There are tons on ebay for cheap though for whatever reason? They also write at twice the speed of a 7200rpm drive. Interesting.

  5. #5
    Yuk it up Monkey Boy! Airbozo's Avatar
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    Default Re: tape backup drives?

    Tape media is considered more fault tolerant than disks and will last longer in storage. I have extensive experience with backups from desktops to servers and setting schedules complete with media testing and recovery using tape libraries. I used to work for Storage Tek (now owned by SUN) building tape units and testing them.

    I have in my career managed tape libraries that will hold about 200tb of data (without a reload) and that thing will not hold more than 200 gb max. Never use the hardware compression on a tape unit, since if that library died, you would have to have the exact same model/series in order to read the tapes.

    Check out this monster;
    http://www.sun.com/storagetek/tape_s...raries/sl8500/

    And there are bigger ones.
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  6. #6
    Greco101
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    Default Re: tape backup drives?

    HOLY... WHAT THE... GOD... MOTHER....WOAH!!!!! Why kind of businesses use something like that?

    240 Petabytes... I've never even heard of that.

  7. #7
    Administrator OvRiDe's Avatar
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    Default Re: tape backup drives?

    One thing should pointed out is this is a tape library meaning it holds multiple tapes. As AB said when it comes to business tape IS the way to go still. One of the main reasons is the ability to store multiple TB of data off site, easily. Disaster recovery is a major concern when it comes the day to day operations of any corporation.

    @Greco101 - The link you put to the little tapes are known as DLT tapes which only hold around 80GB/160GB compressed. The ones that this one takes are AIT tapes.. They are even smaller and hold a lot more .. up to 520GB compressed for the AIT4 tapes. The new AIT5 drives and tapes will hold 400GB uncompressed and 800GB compressed.

    Currently our storage solution is a library with a single AIT4 drive and a 15 tape magazine. So that comes out to about 7.6TB of storage. We are considering upgrading the drive to an AIT5 which would expand us to 11.7TB of storage. When your backing up 23 servers consisting of File Servers, Database servers, Web servers, and Mail servers, it doesn't take long to fill that up in a hurry, even when doing differential backups.

    All that said.. for the home front. Tape is tedious and cumbersome. As SgtM said, a hard drive is more then sufficient at much less cost.

    But it would still be a REALLY neat TOY to have for that price!!!

  8. #8
    Spam Sniper SgtM's Avatar
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    Default Re: tape backup drives?

    Quote Originally Posted by Greco101 View Post
    HOLY... WHAT THE... GOD... MOTHER....WOAH!!!!! Why kind of businesses use something like that?

    240 Petabytes... I've never even heard of that.
    We have bigger ones at work. Our tape cabinet is about 25 feet long and 6 feet tall. I wish I could take pictures for you guys. You would absolutely LOVE our data center.

  9. #9
    Custom Title Honors chaksq's Avatar
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    Default Re: tape backup drives?

    I used to use a tape backup with an old win 3.1 laptop.

    Now that I think of it I have some 3.5" tape backup drives hanging around in my old severs.
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  10. #10
    I didn't know I can put a custom title Dilphat's Avatar
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    Default Re: tape backup drives?

    first what's a petabyte(as i am too lazy to google, about to pass out from the tylenol), also i heard that big business's used silo's for backing up data, do they do that still?
    Do origami to calm yourself when something doesn't make sense or fit! haha, if all else fails get the paper you folded and burn it for no apparent reason.

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