The Wanderer wrote: > However, while I've considered using tapes for backup in my own private > environment, last time I looked the cheapest tape drive with support for > tapes large enough to be reasonable for my hard-drive capacities was > $3000 - and that's just the drive, not the tapes. That rivals - and may > surpass - the build-from-parts cost of my entire computer, which is > already nearly half storage by dollars spent. > > It's possible things have changed since then, but I'd be surprised if > tape drives were economical enough to be practical in a non-commercial > environment.
New tape drives are expensive because they are only sold to businesses; used tape drives are cheap because no business wants to buy them. That said, even a new tape drive is a finicky beast compared to a spinning disk; anyone operating them should really have a spare drive, tested, sitting around and waiting for the primary one to fail. -dsr-
