[allegory]

I still use a Quantum VS160 DLT to back up my SSD...

The thing plugs straight into my laptop via no brand cheapo SCSI/USB bridge much to the laughing from my colleagues (apart from the ops team who understand why I do it).

Being an ex EE, I understand exactly how "transient" the state of an SSD is.

Electrons; gotta catch 'em all.

[beagle3]

Is it because you are not a CE that you don't understand how transient DLT tapes are?

Some people have experienced 10% failure/year and discovered it has to do with storage orientation.

[kjs3]

What does Civil Engineering have to do with tape reliability?

I back up to tape as well (write+verify). It's a risk mitigation strategy (as well as a cost savings). I don't expect to read the tape 10 years from now; I expect to read it an hour or so after a drive fails. The 3 or 4 times I've had to rely on this strategy, I've never lost data.

[beagle3]

I meant chemical engineering. Not versed in all the acronyms, I apologize.

Despite the commonly believed myths, tapes are not very durable unless you store them in the right temperature and humidity and the right orientation. And .. what do you know, the same holds true for magnetic drives (with slightly different, though no harder to achieve, environmental conditions).

Tapes are also generally more expensive before the 200TB mark or so these days (you did factor the cost of a drive into your cost saving, did you?) and actually around 400TB if you factor in two drives (which you should, because the tape drive also fails).

Trusting an SSD is stupid. But the economics of backup tapes are very different from what the vast majority of people believe. For 99.9% of the situations, backing up to a magnetic drive is a better solution.