As another difference, there are WORM tape cartridges available which are quite unlike disk storage. Some industries require WORM capabilities. Also, TS1120 drives can encrypt at the controller (in the drive), with keys managed by z/OS's ICSF. That functionality is becoming increasingly important, and it's quite effective to encrypt at the drive.
I agree with the other commenter that nothing really beats tape for off-site long-term vaulting on-the-cheap. It depends what your RPO requirement is, but unless you invest in a long distance mirroring solution -- GDPS for example -- a single site catastrophe would also wipe out all your data. So you have to look at the whole picture, and in many situations you're comparing tape (times 1 with cartridge shipment) to long-distance mirroring (disk times 2 plus the interconnects). - - - - - Timothy Sipples IBM Consulting Enterprise Software Architect Specializing in Software Architectures Related to System z Based in Tokyo, Serving IBM Japan and IBM Asia-Pacific E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html