- The bright discs were supposed to kill boring magnetic tape once and for all
- But cheap storage almost killed the media for data hoarders
- The tape is still the only true viable term solution, but the units are too expensive
Is 2025 and after almost 20 years, Sony has announced which is finishing the production of Blu-ray media, as well as minidiscists, minidiscious data and minidv tape, a few months after getting rid of its 5.5 TB optical arch file cartridge.
I was hurry to say that this is almost certain that it is for the blank instead of the media pressured (as in the films and console games 4K Bluray) since the transmission, despite its convenience, does not coincide with the media physical when it comes to quality and convenience.
There are still many Blu-ray media suppliers; A quick look at Amazon raises family names such as Leartim, Smartbuy, Ridata, but I think the writing is on the wall for Blu-ray with increasing demand and the attractiveness of alternative storage (external hard drives, portable hard drives, portable ssd laptops). The brilliant discs are made and dusted, without an apparent heir to the throne (despite what we have written in the past).
In addition, the optical disc will deteriorate over time; he Canadian Conservation Institute He estimates that BD-R has an average longevity between 5 and 10 years that cannot be good news for those who have used Blu-ray albums only by writing. Actually, it will depend a lot on many other factors such as humidity, heat, storage conditions, dye quality, etc.
As for the future of local data storage, of the remaining candidates, the tape is the most likely to survive and prosper. Hard discs are excellent for hundreds of low terabytes and the use of helium means that at some point in the future, HDD based on helium will become unusable. Western digital He says that the helium “remains contained within the impulse throughout its useful life”, which is generally between 5 and 10 years, almost the same as Blu-ray.
A single 18-TB LTO-9 cartridge, which is sold for $ 88, can replace 720 25 GB Blu-ray discs, a package that costs $ 288 on Amazon
I will give Athow
Solid state storage is another, but it is still too expensive for anything above two -digit TB backs. Leave aside the exotic storage media such as glass, silica, ceramics, DNA and holographic, there are only a proven and reliable means in the market, everyone’s great fool, the OG: the old, venerable but still very alive Live tape, More specifically Lto (open linear tape). Yes, that same technology that was supposed to be supposed to eliminate.
The current generation, LTO-9, offers 18 TB per tape with LTO-10 that is expected to offer between 24TB and 36TB. Its roadmap, launched in 2022, rises to Gen 14 with a tape capacity of up to 576 TB (yes, that is more than half of a Petabyte). Ridiculous? Well, IBM and Fujifilm already demonstrated such a tape … 2020That is more than four years ago.
Widely used for long -term cold storage in data centers and companies, LTO has the support of some of the larger technology companies In the world and, therefore, it will not disappear soon. The tape comes with its intrinsic problems: the units are expensive and the data stored on a tape can only be accessed linearly. But, on the other hand, the LTO media are very cheap, less than $ 5 per TB, they can be easily stored and is durable with a useful life of up to 30 years.
What I think could consolidate the state of LTO as means of reference for data accumulators is an affordable unit. At this time, the cheapest internal unit of LTO-9 costs more than $ 4,300 and is not compatible with most work stations because it uses SAS (SCSI connected in series) as a physical interface. Adding an external enclosure increases the price to just over $ 5,000. We review an OWC LTO-9 unit in 2022.
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The hope of a Lto-10 tape unit of $ 999
Could a unit of less $ 1,000 change market dynamics? No, I don’t think so. Large data accumulators, those that require hundreds of storage TB by TB value, are a small minor Autolaader) if they wish. to. So, yes, although I would love to have an external HPE LTO-10 unit of $ 999 to use, that has absolutely no possibility to happen.
The affordable storage in the cloud in the low Terabyte orbit is the main reason why the total directionable market for the low -priced local backup has been so much reduced. Blame Fake (unlimited, $ 72/year for a computer), idiot (10TB, $ 99.50/year), Passage (5TB, $ 380 per life). There is even Geyser dataA cloud storage service driven by tape (also known as tapas) at a low and low price of $ 1.55 per TB per month (100TB would cost $ 1,860 per year).
However, cloud storage must complement instead of replacing storage in the facilities as part of a comprehensive support strategy; Just remember that load/download yield will never coincide with a solution at the time and for anything larger than 10 TB, prices will increase rapidly if you are planning for the next decade.
