CentOS - Jul 2008 - OT: backup media options

Greetings.

Sorry for the OT, but I'm looking for some advice regarding archiving.

I've always been a tape archive believer, but with SATA drives becoming 
more reliable and much larger, I'm wondering if it is time to change my 
opinion.

What are the benefits/pitfalls to begin archiving to "enterprise"
level
SATA drives?  Is it possible to use Amanda or Bacula to archive to a 
drive, and maintain a archive regimen?

Archive to the drive, when the drive is full put it in an anti-static 
bag, and place it in storage.  Possibly archive to a mirrored pair if 
one is really concerned.

We are considering using LTO4 as an archive medium.

With the tape densities these days, it appears the tapes are rather 
fragile, and that head gap seems awful small.

Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.

Again, I'm sorry for the OT, but I figured I'd get knowledgeable 
responses from this list instead of sales pitches...

Thanks in advance for your time.

Monty

--On Thursday, July 24, 2008 7:23 AM -0500 Monty Shinn 
<montys at videopost.com> wrote:
> Again, I'm sorry for the OT, but I figured I'd get knowledgeable
> responses from this list instead of sales pitches...
Check out this thread. It's from a Windows perspective, but there's a
lot
of info in the thread about media that's independent of OS.

<http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.windows.server.sbs/browse_frm/thread/a32fee6d389a94ec/>

(I'm using BackupPC 3.0.0 from CentOS 5 Testing (I need to update to 3.1.0) 
to backup a couple of Windows servers and then dump my C5 system to USB 
drives with BackupPC stopped.)