On May 5, 2009, at 22:10 , Thomas Denier wrote:

<snip>

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?

look into the specs of the media. I'd think that in your case the
tapes can be removed from the library once full, so you can store them
under the best possible conditions.

As far as I can see, under optimal conditions, LTO4 media can live up
to 30 years, so there is no reason not to use LTO4.

Of course, with TSM archive manager, you could trigger deletion of
data 7 years after an event (patient 18th birthday), You could (and
probably should) look into TSM Archive manager.

--
Met vriendelijke groeten,

Remco Post
r.post AT plcs DOT nl
+31 6 248 21 622