Article: Cost Of Disk-Based Vs. Tape-Based Archives

By Bob Covey, Qualstar Corporation

The cost of storage has steadily fallen as new developments in magnetic recording have been introduced for both disk drives and digital data tape. With the enticing low prices offered for high capacity Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) hard disks, it is tempting to just store archive data on rotating media. But, is this the right solution? This white paper looks at some of the obvious and not-so-obvious issues of archiving data on both disk-based and tape-based systems.

Let's first address some of the traditional comparisons between disk and tape, leaving out cost for the time being. These are:

• Capacity
• Performance
• Data Availability
• Security