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Physically Immutable Optical Archive Libraries

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Re: Physically Immutable Optical Archive Libraries

#11

Post by cyberax »

traceroute66 wrote: post #9
cyberax wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the back-compat story for LTOs is not great. They are going to try and improve it starting with LTO-10. It was partially on purpose for the earlier LTO generations. The capacity/speed ratio was not too high, so you could just keep upgrading your library in the background every decade. It outweighed the complexity of designing backwards-compatible hardware. But it's becoming less practical now. LTO-4 is 1.6Tb wi…

> Tape drives are much simpler Maybe back in the 90's :) LTO-9 increased track density, increased the total number of tracks by reducing their width and increased linear density. The "how" certainly does not sound "much simpler" to me ?[1] The new, narrower track width was achieved through a combination of improvements in tracking performance, new, narrower tunneling magnetoresistive (TMR) readers within the head ass…

Sure, but that's an order of magnitude better than optical drives. Blu-Ray optical media use feature sizes on the order of 100nm (0.1um) and the read head needs to be able to move in two dimensions to keep it in focus.

I repaired a couple of LTO drives, and they are pretty approachable once you disassemble the Ruby Goldberg tape management devices.

A lot of LTO complexity also matters for _writing_, not reading. If you're an archivist trying to restore a tape, you don't need to worry about optimal tensioning, calibration, etc. You can also read the tape at a fraction of the normal speed so that your control loops can be much looser.

Re: Physically Immutable Optical Archive Libraries

#12

Post by benlivengood »

nasretdinov wrote: post #7

With that modern LLMs are capable of I'n seriously considering investing in at least M-DISC storage or similar to store stuff I don't want to lose :). It's unlikely that both iCloud and Synology get hacked at the same time, but the probability is higher than I could imagine before.

I burned some optical installation media for OpenBSD and Linux for the first time in a long time to have some RO boot media if another Internet Worm comes around.

Re: Physically Immutable Optical Archive Libraries

#13

Post by esterna »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #6

How does this compare vs Microsoft’s Project Silica? Available for purchase being the immediate differentiator, but curious how they fare technically. https://unlocked.microsoft.com/sealed-in-glass/

Silica uses femtosecond lasers for writing and supposedly mostly ordinary silicate glass as the medium. This would probably mean more costly drives and severely cheaper media (Folio claims $3/TB now, $1/TB eventually. I wager Silica would be at least 10x cheaper). If Silica keeps its promises, we might be looking at archival prices cratering. But it's been in development for over a decade, I wouldn't hold my breath.

Really interesting would be R/W speeds.

Re: Physically Immutable Optical Archive Libraries

#15

Post by bob1029 »

nasretdinov wrote: post #7

With that modern LLMs are capable of I'n seriously considering investing in at least M-DISC storage or similar to store stuff I don't want to lose :). It's unlikely that both iCloud and Synology get hacked at the same time, but the probability is higher than I could imagine before.

If you are concerned with durability mostly in terms of the next few decades, I think S3 deep archive would be difficult to beat. Your data is offline by default. It would be logistically infeasible for a rogue agent to physically mount every tape for purging before someone would notice and stop the tape library.

Re: Physically Immutable Optical Archive Libraries

#16

Post by nasretdinov »

bob1029 wrote: post #15
nasretdinov wrote: post #7

With that modern LLMs are capable of I'n seriously considering investing in at least M-DISC storage or similar to store stuff I don't want to lose :). It's unlikely that both iCloud and Synology get hacked at the same time, but the probability is higher than I could imagine before.

If you are concerned with durability mostly in terms of the next few decades, I think S3 deep archive would be difficult to beat. Your data is offline by default. It would be logistically infeasible for a rogue agent to physically mount every tape for purging before someone would notice and stop the tape library.

The risk with any cloud is that while your data might be physically intact, you can still lose access to it for a variety of reasons (e.g. being born in a wrong country)

Re: Physically Immutable Optical Archive Libraries

#17

Post by mkj »

These don't seem really physically immutable, just protected by the firmware of the drives/robot against being written twice. With enough effort couldn't the same laser write _something_ over them again? Maybe optical discs need a hole that gets punched out or something, like the old floppy disk write protect. (And then make that control a physical laser power switch)

Re: Physically Immutable Optical Archive Libraries

#18

Post by hulitu »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #6

How does this compare vs Microsoft’s Project Silica? Available for purchase being the immediate differentiator, but curious how they fare technically. https://unlocked.microsoft.com/sealed-in-glass/

I'm still waiting for the Microsoft’s Vacuum cleaner.
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