[Info-vax] OT: Has Ask Slashdot reached a hilarious new low-point?

[Paul Sture]

On Mon, 13 Aug 2012 03:54:24 -0700, sampsa wrote:

> On Aug 13, 1:28 pm, MG <marcog... at SPAMxs4all.nl> wrote:
> 
>> It's a bit decadent, perhaps (LTO-5 and the upcoming LTO-6 drives plus
>> media cost a fortune, so they aren't really 'at-home'-priced), but ---
>> purely out of curiosity --- how is it mind boggling?  Do you mean
>> whether it will work?  From what I read, with LTFS support for LTO-5
>> (and the upcoming LTO-6), I'd say this would be in the realm of
>> possibilities.
> 
> Yeah if you want to wait 2-3 mins for your tape to seek to your
> downloaded movie I guess..

Perhaps not so long:

http://www.storage-switzerland.com/Articles/
Entries/2010/5/18_What_is_LTFS.html

"One of the advances made when LTO 5 was released was the ability to 
partition media; it includes a partition 0 and a partition 1. Partition 0 
can be quickly read and is an ideal location to house the directory 
structure information that LTFS needs to present the contents of the tape 
media, which is written on partition 1.

...

Depending on the location of the file to be read or where on tape the 
write will occur, it could take 45 to 60 seconds for the activity to 
start. With the speed of LTO 5 (140MB/s native) it shouldn’t take much 
longer to complete"

This is a more interesting application of the technology:

"LTFS is one of the more exciting aspects of LTO 5. Not only does it 
deliver a very simple way for users to interact with LTO 5 based drives, 
it also provides a platform for easier interchange of media. Now, at a 
cost of $50 a TB, 3TBs of information can be overnighted to anywhere in 
the world. In many cases overnight delivery of an LTO5 cartridge would be 
faster than transferring 3TBs of data across a WAN segment. The fact that 
the receiver only needs an LTO 5 drive attached to a computer with the 
free LTFS driver installed, not a special application, to read that data 
is a key advantage."

-- 
Paul Sture