SSD drives

[jbk]

On 03/23/2010 04:14 PM, Jerry Feldman wrote:
> A while back we had a discussion about SSD drives. Today there is an
> article in Slashdot:
> http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/03/23/1647239/SSD-Price-Drops-Signaling-End-of-Spinning-Media?art_pos=4
> This references an article in Gadgetopolis:
> http://www.gadgetopolis.com/posts/7567/all/1
> "The Death Watch for Hard Disk Drive Technology Begins Now (Finally!)"
>    
At the end of the article it asks the question "why is anybody using 
tape backup?"

For the consumer non-tech level user unless they are running windows 
they are not using tape backup. Consumer level tape drives that I could 
find were travan drives accessed by the ide-tape driver. When linux 
introduced the libata driver 5 years ago they never integrated the 
ide-tape code successfully. Fortunately this occurred at the same time 
that external usb drives were becoming affordable, they were actually 
cheaper per G byte than the travan tapes.

I think in the commercial realm tapes still have considerable utility 
for the foreseeable  future. They are still cheaper than HDD storage, 
they weigh less, and they are less fragile.  What medium is a suitable 
replacement for tape when historical backup schemes are involved?

I am happy with my four disk rotation of backup disks. It protects me 
from catastrophic loss of personnal data. It does not allow me to 
restore a system box w/o re-installing the base OS. So it won't prevent 
down time, but I am not running a business. With three computers in the 
house I can point one of those to the backup media and get to my data.

Well just musing as I'm not a sysadmin but I watch that person at my 
office diligently rotating and archiving the tapes every day.

till next
     Jim KR