LTO Figures
While hard disk prices remain high, tape storage continues to be the cheapest option in home labs. Ben Pettis shared his experience installing an LTO-5 tape drive in his homelab. While the professional world now debates LTO-9 versus LTO-10, for home users the affordable price on the second-hand market is the deciding factor.
Pettis’s Measurements
LTO-5 cartridges are palm-sized and hold 1.5 TB of uncompressed data. The higher capacity printed on them is based on a 2:1 compression assumption; Pettis emphasizes that this ratio will not hold for archives dominated by photos and videos.
PCIe Data
Pettis chose the cheaper Fibre Channel model. These drives can be installed with a PCIe adapter; however, he notes that when there is no switch in the circuit, a crossover cable is required to connect TX to RX.
The advantage is price: according to diskprices.com, the lowest cost for disks is 16$/TB, while Pettis bought lightly used tapes on eBay for 2$/TB; a second-hand drive can be found for a few hundred dollars.