NETWORKING
in the right conditions – Then tape is your answer ,” says Barker . “ You can recover data from tape that is 30 or 40 years old without too much trouble . Try finding a hard drive or NAND drive that will still work after 20 years reliably ; even non-volatile memory can degrade and get ‘ bit rotbitrot ’ after being left unpowered for a few years .”
Despite en masse migration to public cloud , Barker points out that , depending on the nature of your data , “ it can be a lot more cost effective than paying Amazon or Microsoft to store your data for years and it ’ s a lot more reliable than the USB hard drive someone keeps under their desk .”
However , because tape has read times measured in minutes or hours , as opposed to the seconds and milliseconds when using disk or solid state drives , it ’ s “ an option only for very cold storage ,” Villa explains . “ Retrieving data from tapes can take several hours , while from HDD it takes milliseconds . HDDs are evolving to next-generation disk technologies and platforms to improve both the cost of ownership and the accessibility for active archive solutions . Recent advancements in HDD technology include new data placement technologies like zoning , higher areal densities , mechanical innovations , intelligent data storage , and new materials innovations .”
Whatever the future of cold storage looks like - whether it ’ s data on a tape reel or a double helix - the need for archival data storage solutions , much like the amount of data being generated around the world and much unlike Kevin Costner ’ s career as a leading man , is only going to continue to grow . datacentremagazine . com 59