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Fujifilm Created a Magnetic Tape That Can Store 580 Terabytes

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Re: Fujifilm Created a Magnetic Tape That Can Store 580 Terabytes

#11
post #3

We reached an inflection 'amazing!' point when we are able to put '100 songs in your pocket'. That was really a shocking thing given the limitations of CD/Tape etc.. But the real inflection point may come when 'all relevant information in your local disk'. The tapes here in question can maybe store every book every written! We may be able to put the entirety of Wikipedia, every film, TV Show ever made, every book eve…

I love this thought, but have some doubts.

So far, storage is still following something resembling Moores law, but it will probably hit physical limits way before a year of youtube (probably 30 of these new tapes or so) fits into your hand.

Re: Fujifilm Created a Magnetic Tape That Can Store 580 Terabytes

#12

That's good. But when will it ever move out of the enterprise market? What I really want is an affordable Tape storage for us common folks / home users to archive data long term. It's really a pain to keep transferring your old backups every 2-5 years to a new CD / DVD / portable HDD. There is a market for home users that really don't want to put their data on the "cloud". And this generation is really creating so mu…

I store on an external HD, and every year I buy a new HD and copy across to it and verify checksums against my records. Costs basically zero and low-effort. What am I missing?

Every year you buy a new HD and yet the cost is basically zero?

Re: Fujifilm Created a Magnetic Tape That Can Store 580 Terabytes

#13
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I store on an external HD, and every year I buy a new HD and copy across to it and verify checksums against my records. Costs basically zero and low-effort. What am I missing?

Every year you buy a new HD and yet the cost is basically zero?

Yeah what does a new HD cost? Like £100 max for a big high quality one? Compared to buying a £5k tape drive and expensive tapes... yeah that's basically zero.

Re: Fujifilm Created a Magnetic Tape That Can Store 580 Terabytes

#14

Last I looked into this, if you had a lot of data to back up (Say 1 Gbyte per second, continuous, with a retention time of 1 year), it was still far cheaper to simply use hard drives. One employee can keep up with all drive replacements, hardware setup, etc with time to spare. Drives aren't super power hungry, so any old office building is suitable. Encrypt the drive contents on another site so you don't need 24/7 se…

That didn’t add up. 1GB per second for a month is 2.6PB. Do you have a source of 40TB disk drives?

Re: Fujifilm Created a Magnetic Tape That Can Store 580 Terabytes

#15

That's good. But when will it ever move out of the enterprise market? What I really want is an affordable Tape storage for us common folks / home users to archive data long term. It's really a pain to keep transferring your old backups every 2-5 years to a new CD / DVD / portable HDD. There is a market for home users that really don't want to put their data on the "cloud". And this generation is really creating so mu…

I store on an external HD, and every year I buy a new HD and copy across to it and verify checksums against my records. Costs basically zero and low-effort. What am I missing?

Why do you do this manual checksumming thing instead of e.g. setting up a ZFS mirror once every n years?

Re: Fujifilm Created a Magnetic Tape That Can Store 580 Terabytes

#16

Last I looked into this, if you had a lot of data to back up (Say 1 Gbyte per second, continuous, with a retention time of 1 year), it was still far cheaper to simply use hard drives. One employee can keep up with all drive replacements, hardware setup, etc with time to spare. Drives aren't super power hungry, so any old office building is suitable. Encrypt the drive contents on another site so you don't need 24/7 se…

You don't have to do it this way, you can just use encryption at rest with a different key for each user and throw the key when a user ask for deletion of their data. No need to get all the backup back to scrub them one by one.

Re: Fujifilm Created a Magnetic Tape That Can Store 580 Terabytes

#17

That's good. But when will it ever move out of the enterprise market? What I really want is an affordable Tape storage for us common folks / home users to archive data long term. It's really a pain to keep transferring your old backups every 2-5 years to a new CD / DVD / portable HDD. There is a market for home users that really don't want to put their data on the "cloud". And this generation is really creating so mu…

I store on an external HD, and every year I buy a new HD and copy across to it and verify checksums against my records. Costs basically zero and low-effort. What am I missing?

>... every year I buy a new HD...

OK, but OP said:

>It's really a pain to keep transferring your old backups every 2-5 years...

Re: Fujifilm Created a Magnetic Tape That Can Store 580 Terabytes

#18
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I store on an external HD, and every year I buy a new HD and copy across to it and verify checksums against my records. Costs basically zero and low-effort. What am I missing?

>... every year I buy a new HD... OK, but OP said: >It's really a pain to keep transferring your old backups every 2-5 years...

Because they're considering options like DVDs.

With a new HD you can just copy it across in one step.

Re: Fujifilm Created a Magnetic Tape That Can Store 580 Terabytes

#19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I store on an external HD, and every year I buy a new HD and copy across to it and verify checksums against my records. Costs basically zero and low-effort. What am I missing?

Why do you do this manual checksumming thing instead of e.g. setting up a ZFS mirror once every n years?

Because simple and manually inspectable is better for backups.

Re: Fujifilm Created a Magnetic Tape That Can Store 580 Terabytes

#20

That's good. But when will it ever move out of the enterprise market? What I really want is an affordable Tape storage for us common folks / home users to archive data long term. It's really a pain to keep transferring your old backups every 2-5 years to a new CD / DVD / portable HDD. There is a market for home users that really don't want to put their data on the "cloud". And this generation is really creating so mu…

I store on an external HD, and every year I buy a new HD and copy across to it and verify checksums against my records. Costs basically zero and low-effort. What am I missing?

Low cost, high density and a low failure rate compared to HDs. That's why it's still used in the enterprise for backup solutions.
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