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by m-p-3 2337 days ago
I wish I could help, but I cannot afford at least 70TB even for myself..
2 comments

Then this comment isn't for you, but rather other HN readers.

If you believe in the importance of science, and if you're a software engineer at FAAAANG, then you can afford a 75+45 TB (scihub+libgen) hard drive array. If you are making $300,000/year then a $5-10k hobby project to store distilled human progress is something that you could make financially possible for yourself.

Consider doing this, because this might be the last opportunity to get a relatively complete copy. Just having a copy and letting it sit for 10 or 20 years can be hugely valuable to the world, let alone your community.

And of course you can partner with some other like-minded folks.
For sourcing drives probably better to go with buying external 10 TB drives (and shucking them). Make a JBOD.. I dunno.

A quick ebay search right now shows used LTO8 drive for $3K (same as new), LTO7 for $1.8K, LTO6 for $0.5K, LTO5 for $0.15K. If you shop around, you can find much better deals.

Here are some tape costs:

LTO-5 (1.5TB/$19.60 = $13.07/TB) LTO-6(2.5TB/$22.58=$9.03/TB) LTO-7 (6TB/$57.95=$9.66/TB) LTO-7 type M (9TB/$57.95=$6.44/TB) LTO-8 (12TB/$134.25=$11.19/TB)

Breakevens:

    LTO8=300T
    LTO7=300T
    LTO6=75T
    LTO5=50T
    LTO4 and below=never
Of course without a tape robot, no one should be using LTO5--there's some personal inconvenience cutoff for everyone.
10TB drives frequently go on sale for ~$160. It may not even cost $10k.
the data is divided up into torrents of a few GB to some dozens of GB. pick a few that you find numerologically interesting (i download ones with my birth year in their number) and back those up.