Well I’m in my mid 20’s so I’m hoping for at least that long :). No I won’t likely need alot of what I store to last that long although I am a member of r/DataHoarder (not sure if they’re on lemmy yet) but for a few items like family photos/videos it’s nice to have it written in a way that I can mostly just set and forget. With the standardization and open source implementation of LTFS you have even less worry about having the software to read it in the future. A SAS IT mode HBA and linux with a git clone of the LTFS repo is all you need.

In terms of cost the drive was very expensive ($2500 NOS from eBay US) but if you treat that as the one off entry cost, the tapes are cheaper for me to buy than the equivalent in HDDs here in Australia. That’s comparing ~$460 20tb EXOS HDDs from serverpartdeals.com to $43 x 8 = $344 2.5TB LTO-6 from stutchdata.com.au.

Also I store the tapes in IP67 boxes from bunnings along with a pack of desiccant and put the boxes in a cool but damp area. Don’t really have alot of choice where I live. It’s either that or hot daily temperature swings. Basement vs attic/garage.

I hope that’s enough to store them correctly environmentally speaking. I am in the process of working out how to clean family VHS tapes that were not stored correctly and that’s not an operation I want to revisit. An extended project is to make 900mhz button cell humidity/temperature monitors to notify me when desiccant has expired.

This may seem excessive but I would argue most don’t do enough in an age where more and more is being stored digitally as the only copy rather than print, etc. I feel this is a small price to pay to keep the still more compact and convenient all digital lifestyle without the data loss issues most people experience. The drive was expensive to buy into but with how little I use it I hope it’s going to last a long time.

There is one on the Wikipedia page.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-RAM

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/DVD-RAM_FUJIFILM_disc_removable_without_cartridge_locking_pin.jpg

Due to the caddy nature I believe there were plans or limited availability of double-sided disks. That would have made it so much more appealing I think.

Yea but the tape is likely to last the 20-30 year estimate. You couldn’t say the same about HDDs especially the helium sealed ones.

Whether the tape drive will survive as well is another question but between the simpler mechanism, a drive 2 generations ahead can still read the tape, parts inter-compatibility if you needed to frankenstein an older drive with new rollers and motors and just plain buying and keeping drives sealed in storage as new-old-stock ahead of time. You have a few options to choose from.

Where as with HDDs you may have to repair each one. The helium ones you may have to re-gas.

Tape sounds like a better long term archival/backup approach.

Believe it or not, first gen DVD-RAM came exactly like this. But manufacturers cheaped out / wanted the drives to be more easily compatible with CDs. So the caddys were scrapped.

And then unsolved as of late by manufacturers cheaping out.

Where do I get the keyboard as a part from? I bought a keyboard from a seemingly branded seller on Aliexpress and the keyboard was really shit. The spacebar didn’t balance at the edges and all the key felt mushy.

I also bought a battery from iFixit and got two warranty replacements and not a single one lasted more than a few hours before bricking itself. As in the battery still measured a voltage and it could keep the ram contents in sleep but the controller/battery info no longer showed up in macOS.

I can do these repairs as difficult as they are but where do I actually get the parts from?

Have you considered the PinePhone (Pro)?

Aside from furthering the development of the architecture (I assume they are contributing and not just taking), It’s meaningless as Qualcomm couldn’t give two shits about open source chip documentation for the chips they release. I’m only interested in a native Linux phone. Meaning no BSP garbage.

Yet another example of leeching off of open source and not giving back anything meaningful.