Backups [was Re: Is tape dead?]

Caveat: my experience is as a home "power user" In my experience it all depends: I have a set of Seagate "consumer grade" SATA drives that are now nearly 10 years old that have been spinning in a RAID 6 almost 24x7 w/o issues. These were bought when Seagate offered a FIVE year warranty. I've also bought a number of the same type of drives in the past five years but with only a three year warranty and the failure rate on those have been abysmal! Now days I buy "enterprise class drives" (have a RAID 6 w/ 4TB Hitachi drives and RAID 5 setups w/ Seagate ES and Cheetah drives). They cost a pretty penny but the peace of mind is worth it. The also have better warranty service. I've never bothered w/ WD drives so I can't comment on those. If I could find a cheap tape backup solution I would love it but anything capable of reasonably backing up 20TB is well out of the consumer pocket book. -Ali