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A comment on Tape still beats SSDs and hard drives when it comes to price per byte. Parent comment

Re:Tape still beats SSDs and hard drives when it comes to pr... by op00to on Wednesday September 25, 2019 @05:50AM (#21069211)
Tape drives are consumable. LTO tape is abrasive, this cleans the heads but also wears them down. I used to manage a scientific computing facility with a PB scale rape archive. We ingested maybe 50 TB a day to tape, and would chew through one of the 8 drives at least twice a week.
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Re:Tape still beats SSDs and hard drives when it comes to pr... by ummwhat on Wednesday September 25, 2019 @05:56AM (#21069238)
I know this is a typo, and I don't usually point out such things, but maybe fix "rape archive"
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Re:Tape still beats SSDs and hard drives when it comes to pr... by arvinsim on Wednesday September 25, 2019 @06:10AM (#21069303)
It certainly made me stop and reread the statement.
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Re:Tape still beats SSDs and hard drives when it comes to pr... by grawprog on Wednesday September 25, 2019 @09:26PM (#21077308)
I didn't even notice until I read the comment below. My brain just saw tape, I had to go back and reread it to make sure it hadn't been corrected yet.
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Re:Tape still beats SSDs and hard drives when it comes to pr... by q3k on Wednesday September 25, 2019 @07:16AM (#21069594)
Was this same generation drive and tape? I've only seen this be this bad when doing MP (LTO4/LTO5) reads/writes in BaFe-targeting drives (LTO6/LTO7).

These old MP tapes are like sandpaper to new drives.

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Re:Tape still beats SSDs and hard drives when it comes to pr... by smueller1234 on Wednesday September 25, 2019 @08:41AM (#21070173)
At work we also refer to LTO5 tapes as sandpaper tapes - glad we're not the only ones with the realization. If we have a significant restore involving archived lto5s, we immediately plan for additional wear and drive repairs. :(

That being said, this does apply within generation to a lesser extent as well.

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Re:Tape still beats SSDs and hard drives when it comes to pr... by q3k on Wednesday September 25, 2019 @09:22AM (#21070488)
I might have worked at your company/project. :)
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Re:Tape still beats SSDs and hard drives when it comes to pr... by smueller1234 on Wednesday September 25, 2019 @11:32AM (#21071737)
Actually, yes, a bit of account stalking says you have. m( Hey there! Folks on the team still miss you.
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Re:Tape still beats SSDs and hard drives when it comes to pr... by segfaultbuserr on Wednesday September 25, 2019 @07:02AM (#21069519)
> Tape drives are consumable. LTO tape is abrasive, this cleans the heads but also wears them down.

Is it possible to replace the RW head on a tape drive? I guess the manufacturers generally don't want this to be easily replaceable, so they can sell more drives...

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Re:Tape still beats SSDs and hard drives when it comes to pr... by smueller1234 on Wednesday September 25, 2019 @08:38AM (#21070157)
Almost universally the business model for significant deployments would be that you have maintenance contracts anyway. That's kind of how the tape business works, certainly if you have libraries as well. In that case you get those drives RMA'd.
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Re:Tape still beats SSDs and hard drives when it comes to pr... by op00to on Saturday September 28, 2019 @10:26AM (#21100446)
We had a service contract. The drive basically contacted IBM and I had a new drive on my desk in 4 hours. I made enough friends at IBM that they left a stock of spares.
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Re:Tape still beats SSDs and hard drives when it comes to pr... by rowanG077 on Thursday September 26, 2019 @04:57AM (#21079325)
Are you using green media? Green media is very abrasive and it's recommended to burn them in before usage. This can literally saves you thousands upon thousands in tape drives.
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Re:Tape still beats SSDs and hard drives when it comes to pr... by andyzweb on Wednesday September 25, 2019 @09:25AM (#21070522)
I'm curious for more details. Are these full-height or half-height drives?
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Re:Tape still beats SSDs and hard drives when it comes to pr... by one2zero on Wednesday September 25, 2019 @06:05PM (#21076094)
Was this "rape" archive at the Vatican perhaps?
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