Anyone else use LTO Tape drive for backing up?

[Phil2008]

I use this for my media drive to backup 4tb of data, I have a LTO3 drive(bought it for a bargin price as it was untested for £20, and it works perfectly and looks new) and can backup 400gb on 1 tape at about 80mb/s and Im currently on my 12th tape. Apparently the tapes can last 30 - 40yrs and are much more reliable than hdds/ssd's You can buy rewritable tapes,

Ah yeah I have all rewritable tapes, I never buy write only once tapes. Plus I prefer rewriting a tape from scratch when I update a tape because than I know its done correctly, instead of keeping on adding things to a tape, Writing a full 400gb tape takes about 2hrs

 

[Stelly]

Its not a bad idea, just where are you going to keep the tapes? I use to use a LTO tape loader in my old place then take them to the fire proof safe in a lodge in 'The Forest'.

 

[Phil2008]

Its not a bad idea, just where are you going to keep the tapes? I use to use a LTO tape loader in my old place then take them to the fire proof safe in a lodge in 'The Forest'.

I just keep the the 12 full tapes in a draw and I think I have about 5more empty tapes to fill and that will take me years, as I dont add much to my media drive now..

I haven't ever backed up my media drive until getting the tape drive as I just couldnt make myself buy big hard drive just for backing up as its such a waste.... So I have been chancing it for many years and have been lucky, but after a few months of having the tape drive a virus destroyed most of the data on my media drive , so I got the drive just in time, hehe phew.

 

[LostCorpse]

i keep looking at LTO tape back up, we use them at work for the data change rate / restore time vs cloud restore. but for home the initial buy is expensive, often being £1000 or more when i look, so for £20 you got a good deal.
tapes are cheap though at around £20-30 (for LTO4 800gb (1.6tb) mark each depending what you get.
i'm just hesitent on the ebay route.
i think its a good way to practive disaster recovery.
i'd prob look at storing any tapes (2nd set of tapes) at an outside location though (be it a mates/parents/work), fire / theft / flood / acts of gods and roudy teenage progeny having parties.. can result in some unhapy times at the worst possible time as usually

i was jsut looking at eyeing up some buys for

Seagate Exos X20 20TB HDD​

it seems reasonable at around £370 for a single drive allowing for better expansion right at the moment and backup/mirroring.


dont forget, back ups are only as good as your restores.. and you can never have enough back up!
that said i'm in a similar boat reliant on single HDs for data ect

 

[Phil2008]

Yeah I got a excellent bargin on my drive,, and yeah LTO3 drives are not super fast and can only hold 400gb on 1 tape,, but its idel for me as I only need to backup a few GBs every few weeks. The only bad thing was the first initial backup, as it took a few days to backup 2-3tb at 60mb/s, plus having to change tapes aswel.. But you can 99.9% grantee that the tapes wont fail if you ever need them, as harddrives are not nearly as reliable for backing up as tapes are.