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How the LHC Is Reviving Magnetic Tape
sandbagger writes "The Large Hadron Collider is the world's biggest science experiment. When spinning, it reportedly generates up to six gigs of data per second. Today's six-terabyte tape cartridges fill rapidly when you're creating that amount of material. The Economist reports that despite the advances in SSDs and hard drives, tape still seems to be the way to go when you need to store massive amounts of digital assets."
Cheapest, sort of.
The price of storage roughly follows the y=mx+c linear graph: m is the cost of the media, while c is the cost of the equipment needed to access it.
For hard drives, it's easy: c=0. A drive is self-contained.
For tape, c is large (Up to several thousand pounds for one tape drive), but m is smaller (Tape, purchased in bulk, is cheap).
So if you're storing a small amount of data, a rack full of hard drives is cheaper. For larger amounts, tape is cheaper.
This ignores issues of ease of access and management software.
Why use a Station Wagon? Why not a 747?
When's the last time you saw a 747 with that totally swank wood trim on the outside?
Sequential access speed is only relevant if you backup huge non-fragmented files or entire raw partitions, and nothing else.