John Callen wrote: > I have > been recommended to use the following systems but have no idea which, if > any, is best.... > > LTO > AIT > DAT
John: All of those are essentially "tape drive" technology. Tapes are good for incremental "backups" where you only very rarely need to restore the data (and when you do, you typically restore the whole drive). I don't find them as useful for accessing an archive of images as they are "linear" which means you have to fast forward the tape to the part that contains the image you need/want. It's much slower in terms of access compared to CDR, DVDR or Hard drives. LTO is "Linear Tape Open" http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid5_gci347603,00.ht ml Upside is fairly low cost (compared to hard drives) The downsides would be accessibility (have to move tape to the find the part you need, and that there are no open standards so if you by the HP version the tapes you make can only be read by other HP units. AIT "advanced intelligent tape" http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid5_gci759328,00.ht ml AIT has a higher storage capacity due to how the information is written on the tape (it's helical like VCRs), but the same downsides as other tape systems, chiefly access time. DAT "Digital Audio Tape" http://www.foldoc.org/foldoc/foldoc.cgi? Digital+Audio+Tapehttp://searchsmallbizit.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0, ,sid44_gci213477,00.html Was originally developed for music, but can also be used for computer data. Downsides are about the same as LTO, in that tapes may not be readable in other devices. Personally I'd go for a RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Discs) with a tape backup for offsite storage. David -- David Riecks (that's "i" before "e", but the "e" is silent) http://www.riecks.com , Chicago Midwest ASMP member http://www.asmp.org/commerce/digitalps.php Chairman, ASMP Digital Photography Standards & Practices committee Chairman, SAA Imaging Technology Standards committee =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
