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0 pointscastratikron9y ago0 comments

You are correct in that hard drives are still an order of magnitude cheaper per unit of storage than solid state drives. Then again, tape drives are still an order of magnitude cheaper per unit storage than hard drives. When was the last time you saw a tape drive?

0 comments

Taek9y ago

The tape industry is still billions of dollars per year. Enterprises still buy tape all the time, and tape technology is still iterating.

And tape is not even that competitve. It's like 1/3 the cost of HDDs, and has an 80 second seek time, making it completely unusable for most real time applications (still usable for theatrical movies).

ams61109y ago

Tapes are still used for enterprise backup, and for hierarchical storage systems (e.g. hot data on SSD, warm data on HDD, cold data migrates to tape eventually).

tim3339y ago

>tape drives are still an order of magnitude cheaper

Are they though? I just searched on Amazon and the cheapest LTO6 drive was $1,619.56.

Even just the tapes are $25 or so for "(2.5TB) native to (6.25TB) compressed" whatever that means which I guess is cheaper per TB if you don't worry about the drive.

https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Ultrium-6-Drive-Height-Intern...

https://www.amazon.com/Sony-Linear-0-85-Inch-Internal-LTX250...

nine_k9y ago

Where do you think Amazon Glacier data are stored?

There's no point storing that on a high-IOPS, always-on medium, like an SSD or even HDD.

Tapes are big, and still make complete sense for backup purposes, especially if you want to maintain latest 10-15 backup copies to choose from.

colek4219y ago

Not likely tape. Looks like evidence points to BXDL

https://storagemojo.com/2014/04/25/amazons-glacier-secret-bd...

germinalphrase9y ago

The film industry commonly uses tapes for digital storage of their media. I've been told (but don't know this myself) that government uses tape for long term data storage as well.

Keyframe9y ago

I'm in film industry. Everything is baked onto LTO tapes. Everything. Three copies, three locations for backup. Always.

Tsiklon9y ago

... under my desk.

hyperbovine9y ago

Two days ago, when I toured a datacenter.

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