On Wed, Mar 12, 2003 at 11:31:45AM -0500, bukys AT cs.rochester DOT edu wrote:
> I am observing that high capacity tapes continue to be expensive, while
> high capacity disk drives continue to fall in price at an astrounding
> rate.

Whenever someone at work criticizes me for spending money on LTO tapes
when IDE drives are "cheaper", I just do the following:

    - Go grab a chip database archive tape off the shelf in the
      computer room.

    - Walk in their office, toss the tape across the office, they
      catch it (or not!), I ask them to toss it back, then I drop
      the tape on their desktop from a half-meter up.

    - Then I ask them if I can grab the hard disk out of their
      desk top computer and do the same schtick.  No takers yet.

This kind of (reletive) robustness is an admirable quality for media
that are going to be transported back and forth from off-site storage.

I'm very glad cheap IDE disks are available to use for holdingdisk,
though!  That's a very good thing.

-- 
Jay Lessert                               jay_lessert AT accelerant DOT net
Accelerant Networks Inc.                       (voice)1.503.439.3461
Beaverton OR, USA                                (fax)1.503.466.9472