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Is there any tape media backup system that works through USB? (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 months ago by to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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So...I was wondering. Is there any backup tape system that would be advisable to use for backing up some TBs? I guess I need it to be USB, as the server is a micro PC, one of those tiny ones you can hang from behind a monitor. It's an HP ProDesk.

Thanks!

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[–] 15 points 2 months ago (3 children)

LTO tapes are 18TB today, raw - 48TB compressed.

How much data you got?

At that size I can probably build 2 Proxmox boxes with drives and compete very well on the costs.

A single 14TB disk is about $270 today - that's in the same realm as a tape.

But tape also requires a drive, and that gets pricey fast.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 months ago* (1 child)

    Where in the world are you finding a 14tb drive for that price that isn't used. More like $370 minimum, more often ~$400 from what I've seen.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago

    I'm not - that's a used price.

    I don't have a problem with used - all my drives are used, and they typically last 5-10 years. I have some drives from 2010 that are still running.

    New drives fail too, so relying on drives being new to prevent failures is foolish. The only defense against failures is duplication (which 3-2-1 backup falls under).

    Whats just as important is to use a file system that can detect and repair data errors (such as ZFS).

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago*

    It depends on the generation. Older tapes and drives are a lot cheaper, especially second hand but hold less (tapes aren't meant to be overwritten a lot though so typically you want unused. New old stock or new).

    Most homelabbers use LTO-6 or 5, and you can also upgrade your drive and still read your old tapes (except for the newest generations iirc)

    I haven't looked at a price comparison for years, so I'm going off pre AI numbers. It was cheaper then spinning rust back then for $/TB (for my setup it was cheaper than rust by a massive margin since I have a quarter petabyte of storage. Amortizing a tape drive over that many tapes gets cheap quickly), but maybe its different now?

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