Programs for magnetic tape management?

[jfinkels]

man mt

Why does Ubuntu keep programs like this included in the distribution? Is it an upstream Debian thing? Or is it just so small that it seems better to leave it in than to bother removing it? Just curious; I don't think "my grandmother" is going to be dealing with magnetic tape drives...

[Nikron]

Probably because it's part a bigger package, and it would take a bit of effort to keep modifying the same package every time it came down stream.

[BoyOfDestiny]

man mt

Why does Ubuntu keep programs like this included in the distribution? Is it an upstream Debian thing? Or is it just so small that it seems better to leave it in than to bother removing it? Just curious; I don't think "my grandmother" is going to be dealing with magnetic tape drives...

Hmm someone saying Linux has too much hardware support?
:)

Anyway, I guess it's still used in enterprise? I wouldn't mind making backups like that if the stuff wasn't so expensive.

Considering the hassle it would take to copy several hundred gigs to dvds even dual layers (I end up just getting hard drives, usb enclosures and using rsync...)

Anyway, don't forget tar (Tape ARchive) files
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_(file_format)

[howlingmadhowie]

hey, i use it every day :)

tape drives are now pretty cheap by e-bay. you can get a dds4 drive for about 50 euros. if you buy 10 tapes bulk they'll probably cost about 20euros. and that's 400GB of incredibly safe storage. to expand it, you just get some more tapes :)

okay, it's pretty slow (a lot slower than a hard drive or even a cd) and you can't browse it, but it doesn't use any energy and can sit on the shelf for 50 years.

and they're also pretty cool :)

[psusi]

There is nothing inherently "safe" about tapes. In fact, in my experience they fail quite often right when you actually need to restore. Hard drives are at least as reliable as tapes, and optical media is even more so, and has a longer shelf life. Tapes can easily become corrupted after a few years from the earth's magnetic field.

These days hard drives are cheap enough that a few external disks makes a fine backup medium for data sets smaller than a terrabyte or two, and they are a heck of a lot faster than tapes, and if you were so inclined, you could set up the removable disk so it would be a fully bootable mirror you could just plug in and are up and running.

[Bungo Pony]

okay, it's pretty slow (a lot slower than a hard drive or even a cd) and you can't browse it, but it doesn't use any energy and can sit on the shelf for 50 years.

Try backing up tapes that are 20-30 years old, let alone 50. I had some data tapes that I ran through a machine which were shedding what looked like dried moisturizer - it was actually tape lubrication. If you were (un)lucky enough to use a batch of tapes with a bad oxide formulation or crappy lubrication, you're going to have a difficult time restoring it.

[blah blah blah]

I hate those thing so much...

[jfinkels]

Wow, I'm glad my thread from a month ago is getting some attention! :D


Tapes can easily become corrupted after a few years from the earth's magnetic field.

Easy solution to that one: remove them from the Earth.