Talking about hoarding, LTO tapes are the king of cheap storage, but if you want to archive significant amounts (hundreds of TB or more), it takes a significant investment to buy a tape library with somewhat recent drive. Too bad there aren't any alternatives - or are there?
Yeah, that's why i wrote that you need a tape library so you change 8 tapes at a time.
If you have LTO-7, writing 8*6TB = 48 TB before having to change tapes sounds pretty good.
And as I found out the drives are tempermental. I had a tape library and eventually both drives said they'd needed cleaning, even after cleaning. When it worked it was great, though a cheap NAS with a couple of hard drives in it replaced it and was far more reliable and cheaper.
How long do they last, and what will you do when they stop making tapes and equipment to read them?
I ask because I came from a generation with a lot of tapes (reels, cassettes, 8-track, Betamax, VHS, etc.). Cassettes are coming back a little, but not much. I know long-term storage still uses tapes, but I wonder for how long. What happens when we run out of the resources to make them? Is there no better and safer long-term media that is affordable? A magnetic event could wipe them all.
I think you're good for 20 years or so if you store the tapes well. Pretty much all of the industry is using LTO tapes so i don't see them going away soon.
