On Wed, 24 May 2006, Albert Eddie Contractor AFRPA CIO/IT wrote:

AECAC> LTO3 is the latest and greatest but you really need to consider COST and
AECAC> storage of the data. We have to store our data for 10+ years. Go through
AECAC> 200 tapes a year @ each of our (3) sites and we are considered a small
AECAC> site.
AECAC> 
AECAC> LTO2 tapes cost $30 each
AECAC> LTO3 tapes are $100 each

A quick look at www.dustin.se shows the following prices translated to 
USD:

LTO-2: $52
LTO-3: $104

(The fairly high price is based on the fairly low SEK/USD exchange rate)

Conclusion: The price per gigabyte stored is about the same, and will 
change to LTO-3's advantage in the comming years. Considering that you 
need fewer slots in your jukebox, and the space requirements needed to 
store data per unit, I'd say that everyone should go for LTO-3.

We, however, use SAIT-1 :) Considering that SAIT-1 doesn't seem to have 
become a common tape technology, I suspect that we might go for the next 
generation of LTO instead of SAIT-2, if media prices will still be higher 
for SAIT tapes.

//Oscar

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