- Glossy Discs Were Supposed to Kill Boring Magnetic Tape Once and For All
- But cheap storage almost killed the media for data hoarders
- Tape remains the only real viable long-term solution but the players are far too expensive
It is 2025 and after almost 20 years, Sony announced that it is ending the production of Blu-ray media as well as mini-discs, mini-disc data and MINIDV tape, a few months after it got rid of its optical disc archive cartridge of 5.5 TB.
I’d be quick to say that it’s almost certainly aimed at empty media as opposed to squeezed media (like in 4K Bluray movies and console games) because streaming, for all its convenience, doesn’t quite fit media physical when it comes to quality and convenience.
There are still plenty of Blu-ray media sellers around; A quick glance at Amazon brings up familiar names such as Verbatim, SmartBuy, Rinata but I think the writing is on the wall for Blu-ray with declining demand and the appeal of alternative storage (external hard drives, portable hard drives, portable SSDS). Brilliant records are done and dusted, with no apparent heir to the throne (despite what we’ve written in the past).
Additionally, the optical disc will deteriorate over time; THE Canadian Conservation Institute estimates that BD-R has an average longevity between 5 and 10 years, which may not be good news for those who have used Blu-ray discs for writing. In reality, it will depend a lot on many other factors like humidity, heat, storage conditions, dye quality, etc.
As for the future of on-premises data storage, of the other candidates, Band is the most likely to survive and thrive. Hard drives are great for the low hundreds of terabytes and the use of helium means that at some point in the future helium based hard drives will become unusable. Digital Western Said that the helium “remains contained in the ride throughout its operational life”, which is typically between 5 and 10 years, about the same as Blu-ray.
A single 18TB LTO-9 cartridge, retailing for $88, can replace 720 25GB Blu-ray discs, a bundle that costs $288 on Amazon
Desired
Solid-state storage is another, but it’s still way too expensive for anything above double-digit TB backups. Put aside exotic storage media like glass, silica, ceramic, DNA and holography, there is only one proven media left on the market, the granddaddy of them all, the OG: the old, venerable but still very much alive, More specifically LTO (linear open tape). Yes, that very technology that optical drives were supposed to eliminate.
The current generation, LTO-9, delivers 18 TB per tape with LTO-10 expected to offer between 24 TB and 36 TB. Its roadmap, published in 2022, goes up to generation 14 with a tape capacity of up to 576 TB (yes, that’s more than half a petabyte). Ridiculous? Well, IBM and Fujifilm already demo such a strip in… 2020that’s more than four years.
Used widely for long-term cold storage in data centers and enterprises, LTO has the support of some of the biggest tech companies in the world and therefore is not going away any time soon. Tape comes with its inherent problems: disks are expensive, and data stored on tape can only be accessed linearly. But, on the other hand, LTO media is very cheap, less than $5 per TB, can be stored easily, and is durable with a lifespan of up to 30 years.
What I think could solidify LTO’s status as the go-to media for data hoarders is an affordable LTO drive. Currently, the LTO-9 Lo-9 Internal Drive costs over $4,300 and is not compatible with the majority of workstations because it uses SAS (serial attached SCSI) as the physical interface. Adding an external speaker increases the price to just over $5,000. We reviewed an LTO-9 drive from OWC in 2022.
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Hope for a $999 LTO-10 tape drive
Could a sub-$1,000 solution change market dynamics? No, I don’t think so. Large data hoarders, those who require hundreds of TBs of storage, are a small minority who will almost certainly have the financial clout (or/and incentive/contacts) to purchase an LTO-8 or 9 drive (or a autoloader) if desired. has. So yeah, although I would love to have a $999 HPE external LTO-10 drive, which has absolutely no chance of happening.
Affordable cloud storage in the low terabyte orbit is the main reason why the total addressable market for low-cost on-premises backup has shrunk so much. Blame Impermeable (Unlimited, $72/year for one computer), idrive (10TB, $99.50/year), Interxt (5TB, $380 lifetime). There is even Geyser dataa low-cost, low-cost tape-powered cloud storage service (aka tapas) of $1.55 per TB per month (100 TB would cost $1,860 per year).
Cloud storage should, however, complement rather than replace on-premises storage as part of a comprehensive backup strategy; Remember that upload/download performance will never match an on-premises solution and for anything larger than 10TB, prices will rise quickly if you plan for the next decade.
