OT: SLR 5 Tape drive vs DAT

[Jay R. Ashworth]

On Wed, Feb 02, 2005 at 10:59:39AM -0500, Fairlight wrote:
> Simon--er, no...it was J. Ryan Kelley--said:
> > The Main advantage i can think of is that tape drives are reuseable, so if
> > you need to backup your data on the same medium several times, Tape is still
> > the better option.  I would agree that DVD is a better option for long term
> > permanent storage though
> 
> DVD-RW/+RW anyone?

Actually, there *are* some good reasons.

Tapes are much more rugged, from a handling standpoint, and the moreso
the larger the tapewidth.

I have a client who is having the annual TR-4 failure.  We contemplated
switching them to DVD-RW, but the box in question is one door away from
a machine shop, and handwashing isn't their strong suit.  The tapes
have a much higher likelihood of not getting trashed.

Secondly, LTO is up to 500GB in a DLT shell.  How many DVDs is that?

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
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