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A comment on Fujifilm Created a Magnetic Tape That Can Store 580 Terabytes. Parent comment

Re:Fujifilm Created a Magnetic Tape That Can Store 580 Terab... by gruez on Monday December 28, 2020 @11:39PM (#25566791)
> You don't even need the absolute latest drives to get reasonable storage volumes. Some careful shopping can net you an LTO-5 (1.5TB native capacity) library unit (one that can be upgraded to newer generations) for under $500, with new tapes $10-15 each.

That's still... pretty terrible. If we compare you costs for a tape drive against a 14TB easystore @ $190[1], the break-even point is around 72TB. I don't know about you, but that's of data you have to store for it to be worth it. Even at 150TB you're only looking at around ~25% (~$500) in savings compared to hard drive, which I don't think is much when you factor in how much of a hassle tape drives are to work with.

[1] https://slickdeals.net/f/14587381-14tb-wd-easystore-external...

[2] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=solve+y+%3D+500+%2B+%2...

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Re:Fujifilm Created a Magnetic Tape That Can Store 580 Terab... by Karunamon on Monday December 28, 2020 @11:52PM (#25566863)
It's not a fair comparison to put up hard drives (integrated mechanics) against tape drives (seprated mechanics). They do not solve the same problem and have different longevity profiles. If I'm spending $500 on tape storage, it's because I want something that will last a long time, something that portable hard drives tend to have issues with.

LTO5 onward supports LTFS, which exposes the tape to the OS as if it were any other removable storage, with the one proviso that deleting files doesn't reclaim space unless the entire tape is wiped.

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Re:Fujifilm Created a Magnetic Tape That Can Store 580 Terab... by seg_lol on Tuesday December 29, 2020 @01:01AM (#25567181)
LTFS is ok, a multilevel tar file with a file list followed by an FEC encoded block store would be easier and more portable.

It has been 8+ years since I played with LTFS, so maybe it has improved.

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Re:Fujifilm Created a Magnetic Tape That Can Store 580 Terab... by Karunamon on Thursday December 31, 2020 @01:35PM (#25595549)
LTFS as of today is supported in FUSE, which realistically means it works on every OS that matters.
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