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We use Ultrium LTO3s. They average about $70 each for 400GB uncompressed. 400GB HDs can be had for $110.

Do not know if that price difference proves or disproves your theory.
I do know we paid a LOT for our StorageTek fiber connected library and our Commvault backup software, a lot like over $300K USD. Of course, I have no idea how much a removable HD solution would be. We paid well more then 300K for our SAN but I guess a HD backup would not need the redundancy and speed of a SAN.

I understand your point, having come from a mainframe background

Or, even better, googled "SL8500" and checked the datasheets. IBM specs the z9 at over 1Tb/s. You think customers who'll pay for that are going to let the library use 2,048 tape drives to play keepaway with their petabytes?

I understand your point, having come from a mainframe background

Or, even better, googled "SL8500" and checked the datasheets. IBM specs the z9 at over 1Tb/s. You think customers who'll pay for that are going to let the library use 2,048 tape drives to play keepaway with their petabytes?

I disagree strongly.

LTO3 is the way to go: 400 GB native 800 GB compressed.
http://www.lto-technology.com/

Look at the StorageTEK SL-500. The library is modular and can be expanded (up to 500 slots and 15 drives) as you requirements dictate.
http://www.storagetek.com/products/product_page228 3.html

I run our company HQ on 5 LTO2 drives in 142 slot library. Weekly full backups about 5 TB. Daily incremental backups take another 3-4 TB per week.

If compatible, I would look at something like:
http://www.storagetek.com/products/product_page238 9.html

This is pretty much the only real sofware: Symantec (formerly Veritas) NetBackup Enterprise Server 6 Hardware: Recommend a StorageTek L80 with whatever drives you see fit. And of course a server to match.. recommend Sun Solaris. If you want, I'll set it up for ya :)

I thought it would be more like EMC as they have a full suite of disk and software already

StorageTek has a pretty decent disk lineup as well:
http://www.storagetek.com/products/disk_storage.ht ml

Check out http://www.sgi.com/products/storage/ for some more info about the storage they are using. For those that don't want to wander around the site, there is a link under the picture of the storage array that says "Watch a Video" and it gives an overview of the technology that SGI uses in their storage solution.

They use tape storage from Storage Tek like this one
And harddrive storage from Engenio (formally LSI Logic Storage Systems) like this.

details of how it is done

60 IBM 3390 Model 3 disks.
Disks

five StorageTek Powderhorn Automated Cartridge Systems. containing 6,000 tape cartridges.
tape library

And the problem is still not N complete, the more data there is the harder it is going to get, not being able to get wiretaps made the problem almost manageable. The right to silence was their luxury. At petabytes of data that is oh lots for every person on the planet.Lets all get with the careless talk.

I am being lazy the numbers are staggering, the data is way beyond for example phone company records.
[Which are allegedly held for 3 years for security reasons. Gosh I feel so secure.]

Real Mean(tm) use this, the StorageTek Streamline. It will take 300 000 carts. At 300 GB per cart, that's 90 Petabyte. Lets see.. That's 90 000 TB, or 90 000 000 GB, or 450 000 000 000 pornographic images.

The problem with most suggestions here is that it seems the average slashdot reader is a linux hobbyist or works as the IT manager for a small office that happens to run linux. What happens when you need to backup 6TB/night and don't want to pay someone to sit around swapping tapes all night. Sometimes it just isn't practical to purchase another SAN solution to facilitate an rsync. Or what if you have a collection of high capacity LTO tape drives at your disposal, but don't have the budget for something larger and automated, or smaller with an autoloader. I think automation and efficiency is almost as important as reliability and cost. Not everyone can afford a Storagetek Powderhorn Silo, or needs the versatility of expensive products such as Veritas Netbackup. Then again, sometimes tar or rsync just don't cut it in an enterprise environment where data is mission critical.

hmmm, 17 of the cheapest IDE drives....

Hope that crisis counselor over at that data recovery place is ready for one heck of a call in about 12 months.

Not that I'm a SCSI fanboy, but if he's buying the cheapest IDE drives I hope he's also planning to invest some money in one of these or something. I'm pretty sure that regardless of what he's putting on there, he'd be disappointed to lose that much data. I mean, imagine the amount of time you would have to invest to collect that much warez and porn.

StorageTek, the company that makes those nifty tape-backup robots, has a new product based on IDE RAID called "BladeStore" that should suit your needs.

Tape drives are anything but cheap, in all my research.

What did your research consist of? Were you pricing only things larger than this? I've bought $250 tape drives that suit my backup needs perfectly. (Or are you slashdot-poor and is $250 too much to spend?)

Drives cost a lot for anything semi-reliable, and once you've got this drive, it probably won't backup a single hard drive on one tape.

Forgive me for being arrogant, but you are not so important that your most prized data cannot fit onto a single CD-R. I have a 15/30GB DLT drive and I can't even fill a single tape on it; I've started backing up unimportant data just because I have the space! There's absolutely no way you need to back up an entire 160 gig hard drive, and, if you do, any decent backup program (even tar, which isn't a decent backup program) can span tapes.

Tape drives used to be practical when you could do a compleet system backup on a tape, but that basicaly isn't possible anymore.

Sure it is. Not every system has 2 terabytes of 100%-used space, especially not someone's crappy home desktop.

- A.P.

At my university, our college of engineering bought a StorageTek Powderhorn for interdepartmental backup. The model we have currently has 100 TB of storage capacity and can be expanded to 300 TB. Its host is a massive Sun server connected to the core network switch via two gigE links and and one ATM link. At the server level in various departments and groups we are mostly doing RAID as disks have become so darn cheap. A simple script dumps data onto the Powderhorn across the street once a week in the event of a major malfunction (RAID recoveries don't always go smoothly), theft, or fire.

The only tape drives I've ever had problems with have been the ghetto-cheap Best Buy discount aisle variety.

Get a decent tape drive:
http://www.quantum.com/Products/Quantum+l+DLTtape/ DLT+8000/Default.htm

And a decent app:
http://www.estinc.com/products.php

Or if perhaps you need a slightly larger tape "drive":
http://www.storagetek.com/products/tape/9310/

Seriously, this would be a boon for NASA. Currently, they're pushing the limits of backup technology and it's expected to get worse.

A "cube library" (as opposed to tape) with a little shuttle to move the cubes around would be a godsend even if the laser to read them costs 300k.

Picture one of these; the laser might take up most of it, but the savings would be incredible.

• The document says the new data warehouse would be run along similar lines to the National DNA Database for profiles of known criminals. It would cost about £3 million to set up and £9m a year to run.

Sounds like pretty cheap operating costs! I'd like to know how they plan on storing the massive terabytes (petabytes?) of data at only $9M a year, much less pay for intelligent engineers to operate the system.

Anyone know how much a StorageTek Powderhorn silo runs?

StorageTek has come up with a newer drive they call the 9840, which delivers better performance than the DLT drives. The cartriges take 8 seconds to load (which is nice, have you ever waited for a DLT drive to mount a new cartridge? Maybe I'm just not patient enough) Plus, you can feed the drives at 20MB/sec. The 9840 mounts in like 8 seconds (I've seen them do it, it's cool) and the drives have some newer type of compression that gets 4:1 (I've seen this as well, using basic gnu tar commands) A link to their site on the 9840 The drive is expensive now, but I'm wagering that since it's new (I think it was released late last year)