Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape

From	anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl)
Newsgroups	comp.lang.forth
Subject	Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape
Date	2012-08-08 10:57 +0000
Organization	Institut fuer Computersprachen, Technische Universitaet Wien
Message-ID	<2012Aug8.125716@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> (permalink)
References	(2 earlier) <7xipcuija4.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <7xehniiiiw.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <1664864.anMTRYW5pS@sunwukong.fritz.box> <7xmx252681.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <5f53f4ed-7891-4351-aa27-e3612f8a341f@k21g2000vbn.googlegroups.com>

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Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> writes:
>> I saw in some storage newsletter earlier today that tape is essentially
>> not used any more even for backup, which surprised me. =A0It's apparently
>> only used for massive archiving (I guess meaning long term retention of
>> data that probably won't be accessed anytime soon, as distinct from
>> backups which are for short term use in case a disk crashes).
>
>Tape is not dead; far from it. It has some distinct advantages over
>other media, foremost of which is a very low cost per bit and no power
>requirements when not being accessed (ignoring disk spin down, which
>in contrast is pretty much a dead technology). When the archive has to
>be "deep and cold", tape wins. Disk costs are just about bearable for
>medium term storage.

Disk costs are lowest for the kinds of backup activities we do in our
group.  Tape is only cheaper for much bigger volumes and then by not
much, and it also has handling disadvantages.  Concerning power
requirements and deep and cold, a disk drive that is powered off
consumes no power, either.  And for powered drives, disk spin-down is
everything but dead.

We switched from tape for backups to disks about a decade ago and are
happy with that.  Tape is not dead, but has been pushed into the
very-high-volume niche.

As for long-term storage, I would not rely on being able to read
current tapes with drives twenty years down the road.  So the way to
go is to copy to new formats regularly, and you can do the same with
disks; reliablility is determined by redundancy, so again which one is
lower cost depends on the volume.

- anton
-- 
M. Anton Ertl  http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html
comp.lang.forth FAQs: http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/faq/toc.html
     New standard: http://www.forth200x.org/forth200x.html
   EuroForth 2012: http://www.euroforth.org/ef12/

Thread

Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape chitselb <chitselb@gmail.com> - 2012-08-07 06:21 -0700
  Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-08-07 08:44 -0500
  Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-08-07 14:01 +0000
  Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Mark Wills <markrobertwills@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-08-07 07:24 -0700
  Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Stan Barr <plan.b@dsl.pipex.com> - 2012-08-07 15:30 +0000
    Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Stan Barr <plan.b@dsl.pipex.com> - 2012-08-07 17:36 +0000
  Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Jason Damisch <jasondamisch@yahoo.com> - 2012-08-07 11:52 -0700
    Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-08-07 12:39 -0700
      Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-08-07 12:55 -0700
        Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-08-07 22:00 +0200
          Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-08-08 00:27 -0700
            Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Mark Wills <markrobertwills@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-08-08 01:26 -0700
              Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2012-08-08 02:31 -0700
              Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-08-08 02:46 -0700
            Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2012-08-08 02:23 -0700
              Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-08-08 10:57 +0000
                Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2012-08-08 04:59 -0700
                Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-08-08 12:24 +0000
                Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2012-08-08 11:10 -0700
                Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-08-09 00:13 +0200
                Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2012-08-08 16:05 -0700
                Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-08-08 17:30 -0700
                Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-08-09 03:26 +0200
                Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2012-08-09 05:30 -0700
                Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-08-09 19:21 +0200
                Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2012-08-09 13:30 -0700
                Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-08-10 01:27 +0200
                Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape vandys@vsta.org - 2012-08-09 00:32 +0000
                Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-08-09 03:33 +0200
                Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-08-09 06:00 +0000
                Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2012-08-09 05:26 -0700
                Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-08-09 13:44 +0000
                Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2012-08-09 10:21 -0700
                Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-08-09 19:50 +0200
                Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2012-08-09 12:32 -0700
                Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-08-09 22:07 +0200
                Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2012-08-09 13:58 -0700
                Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-08-09 17:36 -0700
                Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2012-08-10 04:13 -0700
                Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-08-11 20:27 -0700
                Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-08-10 15:57 +0000
                Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2012-08-13 05:23 -0700
                Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-08-15 15:13 +0000
                Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2012-08-15 11:57 -0700
      Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-08-08 07:08 +0000
        Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape chitselb <chitselb@gmail.com> - 2012-08-08 06:25 -0700
      Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Mark Wills <markrobertwills@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-08-08 01:23 -0700
      Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape kenney@cix.compulink.co.uk - 2012-08-08 05:06 -0500
  Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Percy <percival.andrews@gmail.com> - 2012-08-08 21:11 -0700
    Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape chitselb <chitselb@gmail.com> - 2012-08-08 21:30 -0700
      Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape percival.andrews@gmail.com - 2012-08-08 23:50 -0700
        Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape chitselb <chitselb@gmail.com> - 2012-08-09 03:54 -0700
          Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-08-09 09:07 -0700
            Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape chitselb <chitselb@gmail.com> - 2012-08-09 12:20 -0700
  Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Mat <dambere@web.de> - 2012-08-10 13:41 -0700
    Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Coos Haak <chforth@hccnet.nl> - 2012-08-10 23:54 +0200
      Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape dambere@web.de - 2012-08-10 15:41 -0700
        Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Coos Haak <chforth@hccnet.nl> - 2012-08-11 01:47 +0200
    Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-08-11 03:50 -0500
      Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-08-11 09:03 +0000
        Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-08-11 16:08 -0500
    Re: Implementing virtual memory on cassette tape "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-08-11 21:51 -1000

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