Ideally, I??™d
like to see multiple copies of backups retained: perhaps one on disk and one on tape.
Tape drives have multiple storage formats. At the time of this writing, the more
popular are
??? Digital Linear Tape (DLT): These drives come in a number of varieties, with storage
capacity going up to 800GB and support for native hardware data compression
(probably about a 1.5 to 1 ratio).
??? Linear Tape-Open (LTO): Also available in a number of flavors (currently LTO-1
to LTO-4, with LTO-5 and LTO-6 on the way), LTO is (at least as I??™ve seen) growing
into the de facto tape storage format for Windows-based servers. Currently, the
LTO format supports up to 800GB in uncompressed storage (with built-in hardware
compression available). LTO-5 and LTO-6 are slated to support 1.6TB and
3.2TB, respectively.
Tape drives may also be configured into tape libraries, groups of drives acting as one
to increase capacity, or tape autoloader mechanisms, which robotically replace tapes as
they fill (again, to increase capacity).
One of the greatest challenges with tape storage is in the practical aspect of cataloging
and storing tapes.
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