Best blank data cartridges according to redditors

Tapes are cheaper than disk based storage. Video is just data...

eg. 3TB for $20: http://www.amazon.com/LTO5-Ultrium-3TB-Data-Tape/dp/B003F8MT5I

The tapes used in the show are UR-60 audio cassettes which hold 30 minutes of audio per side. You can identify the type of tape by looking at this image (note the white text in the red squares). The running times of the episodes are between 54 to 58 minutes, so the show is roughly twice as long as the tapes.

> LTO6

How exactly does that work when I see things like Price Example 1 and Price Example 2?

> The UTF-8 encoding might contain bytes that are interpreted by the remote terminal as control codes, such that trying to enter a smart quote into the terminal moves the cursor around and corrupts the entire data record.

That...that one is especially terrifying. I'd say, oh sure, backups, but...unlike old computer hobbyists, they aren't going to be using SD card/CF/HDD replacements. They'd be using original equipment, I bet. Reel to reels, 5" HDDs, old proprietary tape storage (ex. 3M DC 2000)...

Side note: Holy fuck there's those 3M tapes being fucking sold on Amazon.

That's nothing on LTO-6
http://www.amazon.com/LTO-6-Ultrium-6-25TB-Cartridge-C7976A/dp/B00AHQUV3S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1406264452&sr=8-1&keywords=lto-6

That's buying them one at a time, you could probably save a considerable sum by going through a vendor, and buying in bulk.

> The tech is new but I equate this to CRT monitors vs LCD. LCD uses far less materials and yes, its more complicated at first but eventually the process becomes trivial.

CRT was an electron gun mounted between two electromagnets that had to be timed precisely to strike each pixel three times (at different voltages) so that the colors match up as expected. It was a grossly more expensive technology and grossly more complicated one.

LCD is a LED bulb behind a screen. When miniaturization technology caught up to make said screens feasible... then yes, LCDs are cheaper and lighter by design.

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Similarly, Hard Disks and Magnetic Storage do NOT require the same levels of miniaturization technology that a world-class chip fabrication lab requires. Hard Drives are simply cheaper to make and cheaper to design.

Hell, Tape Drives are still the cheapest, and have been for the better-half of a century at this point.

Solid State is incredibly complicated. I'm not sure if you are appreciating the complexity of a modern 14-nm fabrication lab, or the costs associated with running such a facility. Again, the yields between the two factories is proof enough. NAND Flash Chips, on the best factories available today, have approximately a 70% yield. Hard Drives constantly hit 97%+ yields.

This doesn't even account for the fact that no one has built a 5nm prototype facility yet (three nodes into the future), while HDD makers are already testing out HDMR designs. Moore's law is expected to end at 5nm, because that's the level when electrons start quantum teleporting through Silicon atoms uncontrolled.

The Magnetic Storage industry has begun to march forward again. Not only HDDs, but Tapes (with LTO10 expected to hit 48TB per tape at the same cost as today's tapes).

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SSDs are likely going to win on density, but yields are no longer improving and Moore's law seems to be dying. Future SSDs are going to cost a lot more... or have more cost-cutting measures like TLC.

Probably because it's expensive.

The cameras that are being trialed right now cost like $600 apiece. That gets you hardware that's unintrusive, but only has about five hours of battery life at SD, and three hours in HD; plus it only has enough storage for six hours of HD video (source). Bumping that up adds cost and bulk to an already expensive device. But let's say someone does this, and it's $700 (probably $800, but let's be conservative). That's a cool half million just for one camera per officer. Of course, you're going to need more than that; gotta have spares on hand in case one breaks, malfunctions, gets damaged, wears out, whatever. So we'll round that up to $600,000 for cameras (which is also conservative, IMHO).

Then you have to find a way to store and log all that footage. So now you need additional storage space for all the data where nothing of note happens. So 800 officers times, let's say five hours a day (one hour to arrive, get briefed and orders, and get ready, one hour to get back and check in, and one hour for paperwork) times five days a week. At roughly 6MbPS that's 54 Terabytes of data per week. Now, I don't know about you, but to me 54TB seems like kind of a lot. I work in a video production facility and not that long ago we purchased a 48TB SAN that set us back like $56,000 (note: we were getting a discount because we were trading in some old gear, but let's stick with this number). Let's say that unless otherwise needed this stuff only gets stored "online" for three months, and is stored "offline" for three years (minimally; likely it'd be longer). So we need ~650TB of online storage, and at ~$56k per 48TB, we would need 14 units costing almost $800,000. Offline storage would likely be LTO, we'll assume it's LTO-7, which stores 6.4TB of data per tape, so we'd need 1,210 over three years. Now, LTO-7 hasn't been released yet, so all prices from here on out are for LTO-6, just as an FYI. A single LTO-6 tape costs ~$40, so 1,210 of them would cost close to $50,000. The cheapest LTO-6 drive is bout $2,300 and moves 1.45TB per hour. Moving a month's worth of video (we're not even talking about the ancillary data that would need to be attached to this stuff to make any sense) would take over six days.

So $600,000 for cameras, $800,000 for online storage, $52,300 for offline storage, and we haven't even gotten into the infrastructure to support all this. You can probably chalk up another $100,000 worth of networking and cooling gear (this stuff gets hot).

And this isn't insignificant IT stuff. You're going to have to hire someone to handle all this ingest. And someone's going to have to go through all five hours of footage generated each day and log the stuff. So we have to expand the payroll so we don't end up with unmanageable backlogs. I don't even know where that'll come in, but over the course of three years it'll probably cost more than the equipment.

Let's say you have a 2016 Subaru Outback which has 73.3 ft^3 of cargo space which the largest of the vehicles listed.

What kind of tapes are you talking about? Let's say you're spending big bucks and travelling with Sony's 185 TB tapes. I can't find anything about its dimensions, but let's for the sake of argument say it's similar to an LTO tape and is 4.5" x 4.3" x 1.1" = 21.285 in^3.

73.3 ft^3 = 126,663 in^3, but you're not going to get 100% packing efficiency due to the tape packaging as well as all those edges in the vehicle. Let's call it 80% packing efficiency to be on the very conservative side = 101,330 in^3.

101,330 in^3 / 21.285 in^3 = 4,760 tapes x 185 TB each = 880,600 TB.

Now let's say you're driving from your New York offices to Los Angeles offices. Google Maps says this is 2,789 miles and will take 40 hours.

But you're not going to drive straight through. You gotta eat, refuel, and sleep, and maybe even see a local tourist site. So let's double the time: 80 hours. So you're transferring 880,600 TB in 80 hours = 11,007.5 TB/hour. Google says this is 24,461,111 Mbps.

> I'm not sure about that, but they apparently do use archival backup tapes, which is pretty amazing.

This is actually a bit of a pet peeve of mine. Tape decks are awesome, and are still used all the time. The big reason is that they are amazingly cheap. Here is a 6 TB tape for 30 dollars. If you never want to delete anything, tapes are awesome.

£1.00 each on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Maxell-Audio-90min-Blank-Cassette/dp/B0000C6YAQ/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=cassette+tapes&qid=1556648444&s=gateway&sr=8-3

Just to let everyone know this is £25 on amazon

Sony 6.25TB tape for $30.

We use $15 DAT 72 72GB tapes for database backups at my work.

I just coincidentally saw this above. $25 and a supposed 120MB/s

Your tape has a magnetic bias on it that is stronger than erase head and the record head can handle. You need to bulk erase it to restore it to operational capability.

As far as C120 cassettes, the primary recommendation is to avoid these tapes due to the thin tape or only run end to end (don't rewind or Fast Forward in the middle). You can find 5 pack at https://smile.amazon.com/Maxell-Audio-Cassette-Normal-120us/dp/B00C3OZQXM/ref=sr_1_3?hvadid=78615123795759&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvqmt=e&keywords=120+minute+cassettes&qid=1565521425&s=gateway&sr=8-3

Yep, I've done this before. You'll want a splicing block, as well as tape to join the pieces you've edited together

I use these. :-)

800 gb for 25 bucks. If you buy in bulk, it is even cheaper.

Well they definitely aren't $115.

https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-LTO-Ultrium-7-Data-Cartridge/dp/B018J4H8EO

I'm sure in bulk you could get them closer to $60.

For metal particle cassettes

Those numbers in the bottom right (you have it on it's right side, FYI) are the model number. Google that, you get this:

https://www.hifiengine.com/manual_library/sony/tc-252.shtml

Good luck finding parts; i don't think your guy's in working order. But here's the tape:

https://www.amazon.com/Scotch-Magnetic-Recording-Tape-inch/dp/B001DC9H4O

Fully functional and clean those are excellent pieces of equipment. It's no 1/2" tape but it's still pretty fantastic. Mine's a TEAC. It was 20+ when i got it and i've taken reasonably good care of it for the last 20 years and it still works great. Next organic project I do, I'm recording on it. There's nothing else like it.

You should look into tape backup as the storage is very cheap (although the drives tend to be expensive). I presume you don't need access to the data often as you say "archiving".

https://www.amazon.com/Sony-Linear-0-85-Inch-Internal-LTX2500G/dp/B00ARHKUZG/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1526860960&sr=8-4&keywords=tape+backup

> Where are you finding LTO-7 for $90? Please do share

There seem to be plenty on Amazon, to list two:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B019DGCRAW/
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B018J4H8EO/

And thanks for the info on LTO6.

I think you're looking at the wrong thing, they seem dirt cheap according to this link https://www.amazon.com/Sony-Linear-0-85-Inch-Internal-LTX2500G/dp/B00ARHKUZG

> You had to buy a cd player/stereo/laptop/etc at one point, did you not? I'm not understanding the argument of cost.

Yeah, but my point being is that you likely still have a capable device around. Tape decks? Quite a bit older and less people still have this equipment. Tape decks also lack the multiple use scenario of a CD/DVD drive. Software, data, games, movies, and music all come on discs so the things that play these discs are much more ubiquitous.

>CDs can be found for around $0.30 each

http://www.amazon.com/Verbatim-94691-Branded-Recordable-50-Disc/dp/B00029U1DK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375136983&sr=8-1&keywords=blank+cd

$0.20 a CD. So half the cost compared to your number and it only goes cheaper the more bulk you go for.

Let's spend $10 on tapes now to make this purely an Amazon comparison. http://www.amazon.com/Maxell-UR-60-Blank-Audio-Cassette/dp/B000087NBV/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375137258&sr=8-1&keywords=blank+tape

Well, can't do that, so let's get two of these and spend $12.

$0.75/tape.

You keep bringing up how much they're sold for and that's besides the point. They're selling them for cheaper than CDs because of the market they're selling them to. According to the numbers here it's actually giving the labels a much smaller profit margin.

Tape doesn't have the large album art of vinyl nor the sound quality of vinyl or CDs. They have what, portability? That is why 8 tracks lost according to some. But I'm sure no one is still using that portable tape deck.

> No? Magnetic tape is not that great at keeping data. Maybe magnetic disks but definitely not tape. tape gets warped in a ton of different ways waaaay too easily. Not to mention has a super low storage capacity

I used to manage tape backup systems for a medical research university, as well as other formats. If stored properly, tapes are your best bet. As far as capacity? It's the cheapest and densest. Here is 6.5TB for $30. It's just slow.

You can get even cheaper tapes, $42 for 6.25TB / $17 for 3TB

http://www.amazon.com/HP-Ultrium-6-25TB-Cartridge-C7976A/dp/B00AHQUV3S/ref=pd_cp_e_1/178-4500297-9969555

And it's not even horribly slow, up to 160MB/s transfer rate, the only problem is the drives that read the tapes are prohibitively expensive for home use.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0000C6YAQ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_mV-9AbGTKYZP6

Dammit, it's too long for one side of a tape but only goes 16 minutes onto the other one. Those things aren't made anymore, and putting it on a modern reproduction wouldn't do it justice.

I used these...they were fine... https://www.amazon.com/Sony-DVC60PRL-60min-Premium-Cartridge/dp/B001P8XVK2. If you live near LA I have a couple of unopened boxes you can have.

This might not be super helpful, but I found this amazon link.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Apple-Rechargable-Battery-15-inch-MacBook/dp/B001IP6PBO

Just the first thing I found when searching for those things on Amazon.de: HP Ultrium 4 Cartridge, with shipping it's closer to $30, but still quite cheap compared to HDDs, DVD-Rs or Blurays.