Makes sense to use disk where you’re likely to use the data again and need it quickly. I once tried to establish how quickly HDDs deteriorate compared to tape – i.e. come back and read an HDD 2 years after it was written and what’s the loss? I never found anything out. That metric would be interesting to see how it compares to tape.

Chris

I overlooked your article. Sorry for this late answer.

First, i do consider like you archive and backup as two separate functions (with their own supporting software tools) even if the underlying technologies (disk or tape) ‘might’ be the same.

For the backup function, i do consider all these questions of legacy tapes & hardware support a non issue because after one or two month (depending on your backup policy), you’ve migrated all your assets into the new media/drive. We(in my organisation) have also solved the question of tapes lost as we don’t do any tape offloading. The archive function is another ball game. If i look a bit on your bullet list, lots of them points to data migration. For me, i do consider this action as part of any archiving tools and you will need it whether it is tape or disk based archiving system (DO you agree on this ? )

For the Large Volumes of Replicated Data, you’re right. Dedup on tape is inherently difficult to implement. Nothing to say about that except that i do not buy the current approach from my VTL vendor for the dedup.

I’ve done the some CAPEX math and tape are way way much cheaper compared to VTL solutions. It’s really impressive. So i’m considering a mixed approach, VTL for the primary to destage on local & a foreign site.

Ced

I think you are correct in your assumption. We are in a prcess of selecting an off-line backup system for storing HDvideo that is being digitized.

People try to sell us tape for backup said it is cheaper and more secure than using hard disk.

We are in SIngapore, to store tape I need special environment and climate control. Hadr disk I don’t have to.

I am planning to use 2TB eSata drive ( which cost less than US$200 per drive), we use lossless data compression (5:1), and all drive are encrypted for protection. Stored off-line.

What do you think? Should we use tape or Hard disk. I prefer Hard disk for my situation. Like to hear from you.

Regards,
Ray neoh

It reminds me of the national savings rate. We all know we should save more, but nobody does.

Chris, I’d like to see if any of your readers (or you) have any stats that show a trend towards people actually pruning more of their data?