[ On Fri, October 30, 1998 at 02:49:59 (-0800), John Nemeth wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: Amanda backups: gtar or dump?
>
>      Tape, most definitely.  That is the most economical and reliable
> media on which to do backups.  Nothing else really makes sense.

Reliability is highly dependent on the kind of tape and the way in which
you use it (write once or re-write many times).  No helical scan or
multi-track tape has a truely long life, even by the specifications
compared to straight linear recording tape.  Tape cartridges with lots
of moving parts also have an often drastically limited life in terms of
rewrites.  Shelf life may also be a concern, and some tape technologies
have an even lower specified shelf life than CD ROM (DLT and SLR/MLR
claim a 10-year minimum shelf life, which exceeds what I remember
reading about even CD ROMs).

I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the boardrooms of places like
Tandberg and Quantum and Exabyte to see how and why they make decisions
about what products and technologies to focus on.  I note with extreme
interest that although Tandberg has been advertising their MLR line a
lot more recently they're also about to enter the DLT arena.  Are they
feeling the competition?  Is MLR going to die?  Which is really
technically better?  MLR drives were slightly cheaper than DLT.  What
will the pricing spread look like next year?

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098      VE3TCP      <gwoods@acm.org>      <robohack!woods>
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>; Secrets of the Weird <woods@weird.com>