> The media itself is cheap and durable, but the drives are $1,000 or more and sometimes break--in other words, if you really must have your data, you want two drives.
Newer drives will also drop support for older LTO standards, so you end up having to rely on flimsy old hardware to recover your older tapes. For most home users, it just doesn't seem worth the hassle. Maybe it starts making sense for casual/non-professional users in the 100TB+ range, but even the most committed data hoarders are nowhere near that.
Newer drives will also drop support for older LTO standards, so you end up having to rely on flimsy old hardware to recover your older tapes. For most home users, it just doesn't seem worth the hassle. Maybe it starts making sense for casual/non-professional users in the 100TB+ range, but even the most committed data hoarders are nowhere near that.