With Google Workspace cracking down on storage (Been using them for unlimited storage for years now) I was lucky to get a limit of 300TBs, but now I have to actually watch what gets stored lol
A good portion is uh “Linux ISOs”, but the rest is very seldom (In many cases last access was years ago) accessed files that I think would be perfect for tape archival. Things like byte-to-byte drive images and old backups. I figure these would be a good candidate for tape and estimate this portion would be about 100TBs or more
But I’ve never done tape before, so I’m looking for some purchasing advice and such. I seen from some of my research that I should target picking up an LTO8 drive as it’s compatible with LTO9 for when they come down in price.
And then it spiraled from there with discussions on library tape drives that are cheaper but need modifications and all sorts of things
I’ve done a good chunk, but I haven’t found a good source for tape drives. Mine I bought second hand and it overheats and I found that it actually fails it’s testing, so be extremely weary on buying them. I did LTO-8, but I’ve been waiting for years now for them to drop in price. (I probably did the same comparisons as you, TB/$ pricing).
The biggest thing is to make sure you support LTFS. I’ve tried multiple softwares, even down to
tar, but LTFS will make your life simpler. It acts as a simple mount in linux, you just copy and paste.Tapes themselves are all pretty much the same. I buy them new, never used, just like HDDs, and they’re cheap enough that who cares. Note that the compressed sizing will never be reached. Remember that most ISOs are already compressed, and most of your data is already compressed, you can’t compress compressed data, so it’s pretty much a straight shot.
Tape can be a great option, I keep mine in a safety deposit box, fully encrypted. However getting it all set up is a pain in the ass. If you find a good drive at a good price, let me know.
Thanks, yea it looks like this is gonna be a long game to acquire lmao
How repairable are these things?
In my experience? Minimal. Although when you buy a single drive for over $1k you’re also not super into cracking it open and repairing things. From what I can tell, it’s like a blu-ray drive, but more complex, and more delicate. Not to mention since it’s tape you technically need a clean room, because dust can fuck up the heads.
If I could source decent drives for less than 10 grand I’d be a huge supporter of it, but us pro-sumers are pretty much left with ebay.
Do you have any distro or hardware advice? I have an external drive, and I’ve bought several fiber channel cards for it and none of them seem to work either with my motherboard or distribution.
I used an LSI 8i SAS card, with a standard SAS cable to my internal SAS tape drive. Then I just used plain ubuntu to get it up and running. The LSI cards are my go-to for anything SAS, used them for 10 years and never had a single one fail.
Edit @constantokra@lemmy.one I remembered I had this saved, this saved me a ton of time setting up my drive last time, everything I needed: https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-hardware-18/lto-tape-drive-linux-experience-4175620090/
That’s a great resource. Thanks for sharing.
I probably should have gotten a sad drive, but I found a good deal on an external fiber channel one and I didn’t realize how difficult fiber channel cards could be.
I’d be interested to hear how it goes, I’m looking at replacing mine. If you get yours to work, please report back. I’m actively looking for a new LTO8 drive