News Tape Storage Cheaper and Less Polluting than HDDs, SSDs: Research

[Admin]

Switching from HDD to tape for cold storage will cut costs, and benefit the planet, research increasingly shows.

Tape Storage Cheaper and Less Polluting than HDDs, SSDs: Research : Read more

 

[kanewolf]

What a shock!!! A metal shelf requires less electricity than a disk shelf ...

 

[InvalidError]

I'd love to have tape storage for things I'm hoarding just in case and decoupling media from drive. But a tape drive when you are only ever going to own maybe two tapes for redundancy doesn't make much economic sense.

The 30 years useful life is quite optimistic as working compatible replacement drives may be hard to come by 15 years down the road.

 

[John Lauro]

It's still over half the price of HDD. Considering you can't do live restores due to the lack of random access speed, the price would need to be below 25% the costs of HDD to make up for the disadvantages of tape. Even if the raw costs are a little more, better off with portable 10+TB removable hard drives in most cases. Only semi useful use case would be long term archival storage where you need to keep the data 10+ years offline, and even they the value is questionable as it's more difficult to port to newer formats compared to disks.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

My main issue with LTO Tape Cartridges is that it's single spool and that there isn't any simple & cost effective Tape Drives for average consumers.

We need a Tape Cartridge format optimized for the average consumer that is "Dual Spools" and uses a simple Tape Head Mechanism that won't eat the tape like old school Casette Players.

Maybe start basing it off the physical design of a "Modernized Version" of DCC (Digital Compact Cassette) Tapes.

Spoiler: Basic DCC Tape design

Then we can scale up the physical designs to accomodate all the popular Tape Width formats.
The DCC design is literally perfect for adding a paper insert to list the rough contents of the Casette Tape.

 

[excalibur1814]

Mmmm, marketing!

No. I'd never, ever, EVER, return to tape.

 

[InvalidError]

Maybe start basing it off the physical design of a "Modernized Version" of DCC (Digital Compact Cassette) Tapes.

Linear recording on tapes is horrible for data density: DCC maxed out at a theoretical 3h at 384kbps which is only ~500MB and no 3h tapes were actually ever made. On the DAT side of things, old drives using old tapes could cram 5+GB per tape and the newest generations can cram 80+GB per tape.

A modernized version of DCC would likely achieve a similar 1/10th of what helical recording does.

 

[MacB]

Less costly is debatable, but tapes are waaayyyy Less Reliable! Very few orgs do the work to ensure that their tape libraries are recoverable, so essentially instead of having Drives that actually will do something, you'll be wasting resources in something that doesn't

 

[jp7189]

I'd love to have tape storage for things I'm hoarding just in case and decoupling media from drive. But a tape drive when you are only ever going to own maybe two tapes for redundancy doesn't make much economic sense.

The 30 years useful life is quite optimistic as working compatible replacement drives may be hard to come by 15 years down the road.

In my experience, instead of trying to keep working drives of every tape gen onsite, most companies rely on 3rd party services for restores from very old tapes.

 

[jp7189]

My main issue with LTO Tape Cartridges is that it's single spool and that there isn't any simple & cost effective Tape Drives for average consumers.

We need a Tape Cartridge format optimized for the average consumer that is "Dual Spools" and uses a simple Tape Head Mechanism that won't eat the tape like old school Casette Players.

Maybe start basing it off the physical design of a "Modernized Version" of DCC (Digital Compact Cassette) Tapes.

Spoiler: Basic DCC Tape design

Then we can scale up the physical designs to accomodate all the popular Tape Width formats.
The DCC design is literally perfect for adding a paper insert to list the rough contents of the Casette Tape.

Modern LTO contains approx 1 kilometer of tape. A dual spool cartridge like that would be massive as would a library that holds even a few hundred of them.

 

[PEnns]

"Less Polluting than HDDs, SSDs........."

So are computer punch cards....and I bet they're the cheapest too!!

Punch Cards

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Linear recording on tapes is horrible for data density: DCC maxed out at a theoretical 3h at 384kbps which is only ~500MB and no 3h tapes were actually ever made. On the DAT side of things, old drives using old tapes could cram 5+GB per tape and the newest generations can cram 80+GB per tape.

A modernized version of DCC would likely achieve a similar 1/10th of what helical recording does.

You should definitely be using the modern recording method for the Magnetic Tape Head.

But the physical format that contains the Tape needs to be much more accessible and less prone to the worse case scenario of the drive eating the tape.

Something Single Reel Tapes are far worse at.

I want a cheaper to manufacture, mass producible Tape Drive that doesn't have nearly as many moving parts or parts in general, "Dual Spool Cassettes" are the best way to get to that point.

And given history, "Dual Spool Fully Cont ained Tape Cartridges" are the best option for "Mass Consumer Market"

As far as Tape Length, I'd recommend having different standardized Tape Formats based around different Tape Widths.

Modern LTO contains approx 1 kilometer of tape. A dual spool cartridge like that would be massive as would a library that holds even a few hundred of them.

If you want more Capacity per Cartridge, you would scale up to a larger Physical Cassette

LTO will remain as a format for those who are already invested in those systems.
But for the average consumer market, they can't afford expensive Tape Drive mechanisms that costs the current ridiculous prices.

But LTO is designed around a Tape Width of (12.7 mm ± 0.005 mm = ½")

The Dual Spool Cartridge that I would recommend would be derived off the DCC with it's Shutter System, but scaled up to a Sony D-3 Cassette Tape Cartridge.

For Reference:

Spoiler: Sony D1, D2, D3 Casette Tapes

I'd do the same for other tape widths:
1" Wide Tape would be derived off of Sony D-1 Body + DCC for the shutter design
¾" Wide Tape would be derived off of Sony D-2 Body + DCC for the shutter design
½" Wide Tape would be derived off of Sony D-3 Body + DCC for the shutter design
¼" Wide Tape would be derived off of Sony Elcaset Body + DCC for the shutter design
0.15" Wide Tape would be derived off of the original DCC Body & shutter design

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

"Less Polluting than HDDs, SSDs........."

So are computer punch cards....and I bet they're the cheapest too!!

Punch Cards

Paper Punch Cards don't seem like the most durable of materials for storage over decades

 

[Keng Yuan]

Where is that DNA storage tech I remember I saw few years back, far more resilient

 

[InvalidError]

"Less Polluting than HDDs, SSDs........."

So are computer punch cards....and I bet they're the cheapest too!!

How many trees would you need to reliably store 1TB on paper? And paper storage would be write-once, can't just rotate stacks like you would probably rotate tape reels or HDDs across however many months or years of offline backup retention you need.

Paper Punch Cards don't seem like the most durable of materials for storage over decades

Paper can survive for centuries as long as it is stored in a relatively dry environment. Most historic books get destroyed by floods, fires, insects and wars most other media wouldn't survive particularly well either.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Where is that DNA storage tech I remember I saw few years back, far more resilient

What if your DNA storage met a Virus that messed around with your DNA?

Paper can survive for centuries as long as it is stored in a relatively dry environment. Most historic books get destroyed by floods, fires, insects and wars most other media wouldn't survive particularly well either.

Fair enough, most Data Storage mediums aren't designed to survive around those types of disasters

First ever LTO-9 tape drive review shows lots of promise - but also worrying weaknesses

Exclusive review shows plenty of scope for improvement

www.techradar.com

The first Tape Drive system for LTO-9 is $6k.
That is a GIANT barrier to entry for the regular consumer market and not Big Enterprise / Hyper Scalers.

Tape Drive systems need to be $### <- Triple Digit Priced MAX.

The lower the better, remember that back in the day, Cassette Audio Tapes & VHS Recorders were affordable to the average consumer, so I know it's possible to make Dual Spool Cassette Tape Drives "Cheap" enough that are High Quality.

I'd love to have tape storage for things I'm hoarding just in case and decoupling media from drive. But a tape drive when you are only ever going to own maybe two tapes for redundancy doesn't make much economic sense.

But given modern LTO-9 Drives cost > $6k a pop, that's not affordable for the "Average Consumer".

The 30 years useful life is quite optimistic as working compatible replacement drives may be hard to come by 15 years down the road.

If the Drives were Cheap enough $### <- (Triple Digit Max), you'd be able to afford multiple drives and save a few offline (after you validate that it works) for redundancy in the future along with a computer that would be able to run it.

 

[PEnns]

How many trees would you need to reliably store 1TB on paper? And paper storage would be write-once, can't just rotate stacks like you would probably rotate tape reels or HDDs across however many months or years of offline backup retention you need.


Paper can survive for centuries as long as it is stored in a relatively dry environment. Most historic books get destroyed by floods, fires, insects and wars most other media wouldn't survive particularly well either.

Hello!! How about Recycled toilet paper!! 😃

 

[DaveLTX]

My dad used to service tape drives for a living.
The amount of servicing necessary to keep tape drives from eating tapes is very costly and as others have mentioned the drives are pricey as hell!
And there's a high chance tape will degrade anyway. Nobody in the pro world considers tape as safe media, it's only "eco friendly" if you think tape lasts forever, it doesn't
After storage for some time, there's not a good chance the tape and data will survive intact

 

[Matt_ogu812]

When the integrity of your backup is STAT are you going to be worried about if
Tape Storage Cheaper and Less Polluting than HDDs, SSDs?
I highly doubt it, You will be sweating bullets hoping its usable to bring us up to the closest time and day operation. Next is you......will you be the scapegoat or the hero?

 

[InvalidError]

You will be sweating bullets hoping its usable to bring us up to the closest time and day operation.

Tapes aren't used for hourly backups, that would burn through their ~2000 cycles rated life much too fast and they are also far too slow to keep up with that either. They are more commonly used as rolling weekly backups for disaster recovery purposes where one set of tapes may get stored locally in a disaster-proof vault and a second set stored off-site.

If your company gets hit by ransomware, there is a chance the attacker has been inside your systems for a while before the attack got found out. If the attacker got into your backup storage system, your entire live backup history may be compromised. If you have 3+ months of offline backups on tapes though, you will at least be able to roll compromised files back to the backup preceding the attack instead of starting everything that got affected from scratch.

While you may be able to backup 500TB on SSDs and HDDs, maintaining several months of weekly backups on HDDs and SSDs at 500TB a pop would get expensive for data that will most likely never get used again. That is where tapes come in play - the backups are there in case you need them, though pray that you never do.

 

[DaveLTX]

Tapes aren't used for hourly backups, that would burn through their ~2000 cycles rated life much too fast and they are also far too slow to keep up with that either. They are more commonly used as rolling weekly backups for disaster recovery purposes where one set of tapes may get stored locally in a disaster-proof vault and a second set stored off-site.

If your company gets hit by ransomware, there is a chance the attacker has been inside your systems for a while before the attack got found out. If the attacker got into your backup storage system, your entire live backup history may be compromised. If you have 3+ months of offline backups on tapes though, you will at least be able to roll compromised files back to the backup preceding the attack instead of starting everything that got affected from scratch.

While you may be able to backup 500TB on SSDs and HDDs, maintaining several months of weekly backups on HDDs and SSDs at 500TB a pop would get expensive for data that will most likely never get used again. That is where tapes come in play - the backups are there in case you need them, though pray that you never do.

While offline SSDs are either not cost effective or dangerous (nand flash lose charges)
HDD cold backup is a safer option. Tape not so much....

 

[InvalidError]

While offline SSDs are either not cost effective or dangerous (nand flash lose charges)
HDD cold backup is a safer option. Tape not so much....

If you have 500TB of data to backup from your production storage and you want to maintain three months of rolling weekly backups, you would need to have 12x500TB worth of drives, x2 if you need an off-site backup set. You can move PBs worth of tape backups between A and B in a backpack or suitcase while with HDDs and SSDs, moving JBODs will be a two people + dollie job. Also keep in mind that HDDs do not like being driven around very much while tapes couldn't care less as long as they stay dry and at a reasonable temperature.

 

[Keng Yuan]

What if your DNA storage met a Virus that messed around with your DNA?

DNA is extremely reliable, this is how life evolved for billions of years