Comment on Is there any tape media backup system that works through USB?
axum@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 hours ago
Just use a spinning rust drive for periodic backup.
Nothing you have is worth the cost of a LTO setup.
Comment on Is there any tape media backup system that works through USB?
axum@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 hours ago
Just use a spinning rust drive for periodic backup.
Nothing you have is worth the cost of a LTO setup.
Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 8 hours ago
This is the answer.
I haven’t done the math, but even SMB’s dontnuse tape today.
They may do a local replica and then some kind of local-hardware-based cloud backup solution, because cost and capability.
bluGill@fedia.io 7 hours ago
Large companies still use tape for their large data sets. Tape has some useful advantages that make it worth it in very specific situations.
The first is when you have a lot of data - if you have several hundred of even thousands tapes (likely including duplicates!) then the quantity of data you have backed up is large enough the tapes are the cheapest.
The second - as hinted above - is duplicates. If you don't want the data lost a tape is a good answer to have several copies. While a disk might be cheaper, they are fragile and computers are not designed to swap disks that often. Even USB which is designed for swapping isn't that good: the connector will physically wear out a lot faster than you would expect making the costs much higher to manage this. Plus the labor to plug/unplug a lot of drives will get you.
Third, some tapes come in a write once form. If you have data that (often for legal reasons) you need to store such that it cannot be modified later then tape is often you best answer to ensure the data really wasn't changed. (either by an executive hiding their tracks, or an attacker trying to put ransomware on you).
That said, for most reading this, a few disks in a NAS is better than about 98% of people have and if you have snapshots on the NAS probably good enough for everything (your only risk is fire or theft of the NAS - if you cannot live with this get a second NAS elsewhere, or a cloud backup), similar cost, and has enough other useful features that you want it anyway.
CameronDev@programming.dev 8 hours ago
Does make you wonder who does use tape? Id assume big businesses just use cloud, so who is left that uses tape?
EarMaster@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Depending on what cloud tier you are using they might use tape then (e.g. IBM Cloud Object Storage Deep Archive).
CameronDev@programming.dev 5 hours ago
Don’t clouds mostly just rely on replication across zones though?
I would have thought tapes were just too slow to be useful in that environment.
I’ll read up on the IBM deep archive.