John R Pierce wrote: > Mark Schoonover wrote: >> Cost is another factor. An Exabyte LTO3 1x7 loader is MSRP $6500, >> with 20 tapes $1130 in a pack. My 4TB backup server cost just under >> $5000 at the time, cheaper today. Then, you have the daily admin of >> flipping tapes. Disks run without intervention once configured, and >> it's nice to have especially if you have employees working over the >> weekends, or on holidays. >> > > > HP's version of that same LTO3 1/8 autoloader is around $5000 street > price (sometimes under $4500). The Quantum OEM version > ("Superloader") is about the same. > > of course, 20 LTO3 tapes is 16 terabytes. and you can have another > 16 terabytes in archive for another $1100 or whatever. That 1/8 > autoloader holds 8 of them, which is 6.4 terabytes online with no > operator intervention required until it comes time to ship a box of > tapes to the offsite vault. > Assuming 2:1 compression will you get 16TB, but with my data, 1.3:1 is more realistic. Now that you mention it, a similar disk backup system is located 100 miles away in a colo site. Every night I do offsite backups, automatically. No shipping tapes, or other user intervention. Tape backups require user intervention everyday. There's no way around it, especially if you're testing your backups for reliability. Mark