Hi all,
I have been using LTO-4 for a few years in my home lab and it has worked great (and saved my butt a few times with hardware failures etc).
However I have to manage a server that holds around 24TB currently (and growing by roughly a TB+ per month) of aviation videos. This server automatically backs up to Backblaze but I’m uneasy about it being enough.
I do at this point use my LTO-4 drive to back up very critical videos but in order to back up the entire server I’d need some 30 tapes with another 2 needed every month (and while the drive still states 99% health on everything, it is quite old).
LTO-5 on the other hand I would only need 16 and one new tape a month. I considered LTO 6 but it is quite a price jump and I’m not sure if it is worth it?
I have seen an LTO-5 tape drive (although it’s out of a Quantum enclosure) for £50.00 with a 90 day warranty. For tapes themselves I can either buy new for £18.00 each or a box of 20 used for £59.00 (although I’m told used tapes are a bad idea).
My 2 questions are can autoloader Fiber attached tape drives be used with a SAS interface outside their enclosure (in a PC). And, is this a good deal or a terrible idea as a second backup for my data? The alternative is I’m going to have to spend £1000+ on several new hard drives to back this all up. But it gets difficult because to add more storage I have to add several more hard drives vs the convenience of just buying another tape.
What’s your opinions?
Thank you