[Talk] Reality check...

[Peter Jeremy]

[Cross-posts trimmed]
On 2002-Sep-11 13:40:25 +1000, Steve Jenkin <sjenkin at pcug.org.au> wrote:
>IDEA:
>The cost of DLT & LTO tape media is ~$3/Gb.
>The cost of commodity IDE drives is ~$1-2/Gb.  IDE enclosures with
>either Firewire or USB are cheap & readily available.

Last time I checked, Super-DLT media was somewhat less than that
(though it is far the cheapest per GB).

The last time I bought disks they were ~USD1/GB - where do you get
them for AUD1/GB?.  By the time you add hot-swap enclosures, you're
back to around the same price as tapes.  And as everyone else has
noted, disks tend to be more fragile.  Admittedly, a hot-swap tray
is several orders of magnitude cheaper than a tape drive.

And whilst disks may be OK for backups (where they are being recycled
regularly), I wouldn't trust them for archival purposes.

Peter