17 Mar
2005
17 Mar
'05
12:46 a.m.
On Thu, 2005-03-17 at 00:32 -0800, Tom Jennings wrote:
Hard disk storage also neatly avoids the
incompatible-media issue;
it's continuously ported, incrementally. The translation issues
are from M to M+1, far less than trying to deal with 8" floppies,
1/2" tape or other once-standard media.
Also, for the moment at least, disks of tomorrow are chealer and
larger than disks of today, neatly taking care of increasing data
size (for how long this will hold out I don't know).
Whether you have 10MB or 1 TB of data, it's still cheaper with
rotating spindles. If you've really got a terabyte of data to
reliably save, backup tape isn't cheaper -- if you include the
longevity issue, of translating last-years tapes to next-years
tape. Who does that? Not many...
It's not about the medium, it's about the data. All of our mediums
suck for archival purposes, except paper and fiche.
Generally-speaking, our cultures don't directly care about
preserving the future, and machine media is a narrower case of
that.
This reminds me that I read not too long ago that many of the super
computer labs ship PCs between sites because it's *faster* to ship a
working PC with 1TB of disk containing data than it is to transfer it
over a long haul network (ie FedEx will get it there in ~24hrs...think
about the bandwidth required to transfer 1TB in ~24hrs). Not to mention
a whole lot cheaper! It also scales well!! :-)
Reminds me of the saying "Don't underestimate the bandwidth of a station
wagon full of tapes going at 60mph!".
(And yes, I probably got that quote wrong too!).
--
TTFN - Guy