Why not Blu-Ray ? Much faster to access, they have a fairly long life and can store 50Gb per disk.

I thought of that first, but I need terabyte or near terabyte capacities. That's why i'm looking at LTO-4 and LTO-5 tape. I'm looking at a dell powervault 124T right now.

Is magnetic tape really more reliable than a modern backup HDD?

Fewer moving parts, less complexity, less vulnerability to physical shocks. If your data is worth it to you then tape is the way to go.

You just said you've reached capacity on your storage but you want to use tape for backup. Which is it? Is the tape a backup or will it be the only copy of your data?

Stating the obvious here, It's not a backup if there isn't at least one other copy.

Since you won't have the storage to test a full restore I recommend testing restores of a percentage of your data quarterly.
Review the documentation for the tapes and make sure they are stored and handled properly.
They are tape backups so don't be accessing them frequently to restore data.
Clean your tape drive.
Don't leave your tapes in the drive. It's a backup. Treat it like one.
I've been out of the tape game awhile but I believe there was functionality that was released that lets you access the tape drive as if it was just another drive. Can't remember the name.

EDIT LTFS is what I was thinking of. You may want to look into that since it may get rid of using proprietary software to access your backups, think you still have to load a client but the standard is open.

DosFreak wrote:

You just said you've reached capacity on your storage but you want to use tape for backup. Which is it? Is the tape a backup or […]
Show full quote

You just said you've reached capacity on your storage but you want to use tape for backup. Which is it? Is the tape a backup or will it be the only copy of your data?

Stating the obvious here, It's not a backup if there isn't at least one other copy.

Since you won't have the storage to test a full restore I recommend testing restores of a percentage of your data quarterly.
Review the documentation for the tapes and make sure they are stored and handled properly.
They are tape backups so don't be accessing them frequently to restore data.
Clean your tape drive.
Don't leave your tapes in the drive. It's a backup. Treat it like one.
I've been out of the tape game awhile but I believe there was functionality that was released that lets you access the tape drive as if it was just another drive. Can't remember the name.

No, the tape isn't exactly for backup. I want it for long term storage (i'm fine with duplicating tapes every few years). Basically what I want is a tape autoloader that can present each tape as an individual drive and reliably access tapes on a monthly or bi-weekly basis without destroying them. Access latency isn't an issue. You just jogged my memory and the term I need to add into my search query is WORM.

Nope, WORM designated a very specific feature on LTO tape.

[/quote]EDIT LTFS is what I was thinking of. You may want to look into that since it may get rid of using proprietary software to access your backups, think you still have to load a client but the standard is open.[/quote]

Yeah, that's definitely important. I always thought that was a native feature from the beginning of the LTO standard. So, now after I looked into it, LTO-5 loaders and drives are reaching the price range where it's beyond my current budget just like a RAID array. I found a loader for 200 + s/h but i'm not sure if it fully supports LTFS.

IIRC, usually tape robots present full volumes (spanning many tapes) and select the appropriate tape to seek to the right spot and grab your file. FWIW, Amanda supports this functionality with the 124T.

gdjacobs wrote:

IIRC, usually tape robots present full volumes (spanning many tapes) and select the appropriate tape to seek to the right spot and grab your file. FWIW, Amanda supports this functionality with the 124T.

That sounds good. I'm not sure what amanda is though. The 124T is exactly the model I was looking at previously. Have you used that software and will it fully support a random access file system?

Amanda is a client/server backup architecture. Based on a quick search, I haven't found a nearline filesystem implemented on top of Amanda, but specific files can certainly be extracted from a backup volume as opposed to a whole set.
http://wiki.zmanda.com/index.php/How_To:Recover_Data

I looked up the 124T because you mentioned it.

Tape is good for backup and archival. But expensive in the capacity you require.

Honestly, I would get a few 2TB drives. make a raid volume and go nuts. I have 3 setups in my file server. 1 array of 24 1tb drives in raid 6, 2 1tb drives in a raid 1, and finally an 400gb tape drive that keeps the mission critical data safe. (family photos, tax documents, etc) The tape and raid 1 volumes are both encrypted. I found a few years ago a literal PILE of dvr's in a dumpster all with 1tb drives, all were 2.5" and low power and designed for 24/7 use. so they have served me well.

luckybob wrote:

Tape is good for backup and archival. But expensive in the capacity you require.

Honestly, I would get a few 2TB drives. make a raid volume and go nuts. I have 3 setups in my file server. 1 array of 24 1tb drives in raid 6, 2 1tb drives in a raid 1, and finally an 400gb tape drive that keeps the mission critical data safe. (family photos, tax documents, etc) The tape and raid 1 volumes are both encrypted. I found a few years ago a literal PILE of dvr's in a dumpster all with 1tb drives, all were 2.5" and low power and designed for 24/7 use. so they have served me well.

IDK about that 2TB drives are about 60USD each plus a decent array which is about 100+. So for about 280, lets say 250 I have 4TB of space. That's barely enough just for what I have planned ATM. Also, just about reaching my budget limit. Now add in the excessive wear adding drives to an array causes not to mention the cost of new drives. That's extra risk and certainly extra cost. Currently i'm looking at 200 for the autoloader and 15-20 per 1.5TB/3TB tape. So, I can get the same starting capacity, better if use compression. Moving forward i get about 70+ percent savings per TB.

But the advantage of hard drives is the availability. You say this will be accessed several times a month? That's going to be a pain in the ass with tape. Hell, you can just turn the hard drives off if you know they won't be used for a week. I found a 24 port sata raid card for like $80. it will actually turn the drives off when not in use.

It's not the same tape format as the one you're using. LTO tapes, (apparently only modern ones) allow random access. Yes, there will be significant seek time but that's fine. If I'm burning or transferring a single or multiple ISO files then I'm not going to worry about a few extra minutes. I could have sworn there were ways to do this in software on old drives, like DDS and older LTO formats. Now that I know it's supported in the LTO standard I'm not worried about tape degredation anymore. So I think that's the route I'll go.

Well yes the problem with tape has always been cost. Cheap tapes are too small to be useful and large tapes are too expensive to be economical. Tape will probably never see widespread use outside of corporate environments.

(That reminds me, wasn't there a way of using VHS tape to back up computer data in the 1990s? Capacities were pretty good for the time IIRC.)

Errius wrote:

Well yes the problem with tape has always been cost. Cheap tapes are too small to be useful and large tapes are too expensive to be economical. Tape will probably never see widespread use outside of corporate environments.

(That reminds me, wasn't there a way of using VHS tape to back up computer data in the 1990s? Capacities were pretty good for the time IIRC.)

Late 80s and very early 90s. There were advertisements about ISA controller cards that "drive" your regular VHS recorders, though I never saw one in person.

Before CD recorders become economically viable (well, there was a time when an 2x recorder was about 2000+ USD), I used cheaper QIC tape backup units (250r something) a lot for personal long term data backup and I was happy. I never thought them as practical or economical today though. I have external HDDs on shelves and RAID 1 arrays in my PC for that purpose.

Is anyone using these BD-R XL 100 GB disks? I have a drive capable of burning them but have never used them.

This coming form someone that works with servers a lot for work. Tape is grate for long term backups and archiving.

Tape is slow, its not very user friendly to restore backups with tape, tape is grate for a system restore or a raid rebuild.
Tape is not for a "Opps I deleted something by mistake" backup restore. Its best used for log term back ups or part of a highly structured back plan such as a grandfather, father, son backup or ToH system.

Tape in my option of best used for restoring a system to day one or a grandfather backup. IE install/setup the system and use tape to image the system or a once a month/year backup, then put that tape in a magnetically sealed safe in a different place.