Does anyone have 25 year old tape media or tape drives around?
Will you stil be able to use LTOx media in 25 years?

-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf Of
Thomas Denier
Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2009 4:11 PM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: [ADSM-L] LTO for long term archiving

I work for a large hospital. I have been asked to investigate possible
configurations for archiving something between a few hundred terabytes
and a petabyte of data for 25 years. This would be clinical records that
we need to keep in case of a malpractice suit. The retention period is
25 years because there are two ways we can get sued for alleged
malpractice involving a pediatric patient. The parents or guardians have
a seven year window of opportunity to file suit, starting at the time of
the alleged malpractice. The patient has a seven year window of
opportunity, starting at his or her 18th birthday. In principle, the
retention period should vary depending on patient age, but nobody I have
talked to so far thinks it is practical to sort records in this way;
they want a uniform retention period that covers the worst case scenario
(a patient allegedly harmed as a newborn suing just before the end of
his or her seven year window).

As far as I can tell, the most expensive part of such a configuration is
the media, and LTO media will cost about a third as much as the most
economical MagStar media (extended length 3592 volumes read and written
with TS1130 drives). With the sort of workload described above I don't
expect any difficulty staying within the recommended limit on the number
of times an LTO volume passes over the tape heads. Are there any other
reasons to be nervous about using LTO for long term archives?

IMPORTANT:  E-mail sent through the Internet is not secure. Legg Mason 
therefore recommends that you do not send any confidential or sensitive 
information to us via electronic mail, including social security numbers, 
account numbers, or personal identification numbers. Delivery, and or timely 
delivery of Internet mail is not guaranteed. Legg Mason therefore recommends 
that you do not send time sensitive 
or action-oriented messages to us via electronic mail.

This message is intended for the addressee only and may contain privileged or 
confidential information. Unless you are the intended recipient, you may not 
use, copy or disclose to anyone any information contained in this message. If 
you have received this message in error, please notify the author by replying 
to this message and then kindly delete the message. Thank you.