I'll step back in here since people seem to want to slam tape.
I'll be more precise: I design, run, and manage systems in home, SOHO, or SMB environments. 3.25TB is still huge, and most entities with which I do business or with which I am acquainted haven't even broken 200GB yet... to them, off-site backup really is as simple as backing up to a single removable 250GB hard drive and taking it home. In these environments, I have yet to find a situation where tape is, to me, the best alternative; and so I am biased, but not blind.
I happen to manage systems in a medium-size enterprise. One server alone has 3.5TB of storage. For that server, we take weekly full backups and plan to keep (most systems are already there but this one isn't yet) weekly full backups with 4 generations, monthly full backups with probably 12 generations, and several years of annuals. We're looking at least 15 copies of 3.5TB of data.
Wow...
Using Rodolfo's estimate of 1.3TB costing 6K, backing up just this server would cost about $240K. At 200GB per tape, this requires 265 tapes. At $65 per tape, we're eating up $17K in tape costs.
Err... that was 3.25TB for $6K, making the cost of 52TB about $96K. This does not change your point or your argument in any way... clearly in this case, tape is the best solution for you. (I just never met 52TB of off-line storage before!!!)
-- Rodolfo J. Paiz [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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