Storage forum: DAT or blu-ray?

How much is a backup worth? At the office they spent 12 grand to recover a hard disk. I had from that time on a clear number of what backups should cost and the few dollars you offered never approach the cost of recovery.

We use DLTs...

Bob

lesser long term storage...... For long term storage, not so much so.

External hadrdrives are great for most ppl since:
-cheap given the GB per $$ ratio
-flexible as u can put stuff on there but delete it to make room for more important things. Optical recordable discs can never be modified once burned to, and ReWritable discs have issues in some burner softwares may not be able read data written by anotehr type of burner sw
-easy to use. Plug into USB port, drag and drop. Again, no burner software to bother with
-ubiquitous. Unlike a zip drive or DVD media which has +/- formats, and HDDVD and BR discs which won't catch on mainstream for another estimated 8 years, USB ports and ext HDs are everywhere.

I've mentioned some cons about optical media. However, if you wnat someth for long term storages, like familiy photos on a CD or DVD to preserve 20 years down the line for future generations, I'd keep a copy of them on discs in addition to ext HDs, since HDs can fail given time, tho less so if not used.

Tape drives appear to be used by corporations and big companies to address the same cons about ext HDDs for stoarge. Again, they're MUCH better suited for archiving as oppsoed to backups since they're slow in operation. They do have longevity. Many years back, one company even made a type of tape drive that could withstand boiling water and freezer environments. It was demonstrated so by backing data to 2 sets of tape drive media. One was thrown in with a pot of spaghetti being boiled, the other was stuffed in the freezer with meat. Both sets were used to attempt retreiving data on them and the data was still there just fine!