Re: tape drives
The Wanderer wrote:
> However, while I've considered using tapes for backup in my own private
> environment, last time I looked the cheapest tape drive with support for
> tapes large enough to be reasonable for my hard-drive capacities was
> $3000 - and that's just the drive, not the tapes. That rivals - and may
> surpass - the build-from-parts cost of my entire computer, which is
> already nearly half storage by dollars spent.
>
> It's possible things have changed since then, but I'd be surprised if
> tape drives were economical enough to be practical in a non-commercial
> environment.
New tape drives are expensive because they are only sold to
businesses; used tape drives are cheap because no business wants
to buy them.
That said, even a new tape drive is a finicky beast compared to
a spinning disk; anyone operating them should really have a
spare drive, tested, sitting around and waiting for the primary
one to fail.
-dsr-
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