On Sun, 2005-09-04 at 12:31 -0700, Jack Coates wrote: > RAID costs more than other solutions like tape, but is still simple > enough to be sold as a simple upgrade without triggering the customer's > "I gotta buy a second computer?!" gag reflex.
Tape costs a fortune. The drives and tapes are expensive and you have to put the tape in the slot, label them, remember to reuse them properly, etc. And they all degrade over time, so you have to check the media, etc. It is hard to see that tape is actually cheaper than anything when you add in all the repeating and management costs. I've seen the "I gotta buy a second computer?!" gag reflex. And I don't grok it either. Computers are nearly free. If you want RAID, you want the second disks anyway. So you are only talking about a few hundred dollars, max. And for backups, you don't need any performance, so that old P3 that you retired and have sitting in the closet works just fine. They are free. Some others have asked about long term stability of DVDs. It is a little too soon to know for sure, but it is not wise to expect that you can burn your data onto anything, and read it forever. You should expect to replace it with newer technology every few years. Just make sure to verify that you can read the old stuff when the new cooler faster, cheaper stuff comes out. I expect that we'll have two generations of DVD in the next five years. The inability to reach agreement leading to HD-DVD versus BluRay format wars is bad, and I expect both will be replaced sooner than expected if one had won and achieved market share. -- Pat http://www.pfarrell.com/music/slimserver/slimsoftware.html _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
