AFAIK modern tape cartridges (Don't call them "Cassettes") have some chippery in them but are mostly passive devices which can (under sufficient provocation) be taken apart and the tape extracted and still be read.

Everything else used either a lot of devices (like USB and SD cards) or wraps the media with a lot of hardware, IE hard drives.

BTW AFAIK the seismic recordings of surveys for oil and gas are still stored on tapes on reels (about 20MB/tape IIRC) because it's a)Already existing there b)they already have the drives to read and write it c)Every time the rendering software improves they effectively re-run a "Virtual survey,*" in the hope of flushing out some more black gold.

*Running a modern real survey over the same ground in 2025 would be ridiculously expensive

Afaik, the chippery in a modern tape cartridge is pretty much just for ID, type and status purposes so you can have robots pick and return the cartridge you need. (and probably also some vendor lock in)

Okay, but as far as those (much) older reel-based tapes are concerned, 20MB might have been a lot back then, but it's nothing by modern standards.

So I'd have thought that- rather than *having* to go back to the original tapes and drives every time that data is required- they would simply have copied the data once to more modern (and importantly, more easily-accessible) storage at some point? I mean, presumably it's digital in the first place, so even if they wanted to re-analyse the data, it wouldn't matter whether they used the original tapes or the copy?

They could certainly retain the original tapes for archival purposes- I'm not suggesting they bin them. But surely they shouldn't actually *need* to go back to them every time they need the data?

I'm just happy the Government DOES backups of stuff, and that they work (or at least they should).

Now, if they should be using LTO 9 or newer (they should) and some near-online caching on newer media (probably a good idea) I'd leave to the experts, not DOGE.

As long it isn't on reel-to-reel 9 track tapes anymore, I'm ok.

"I'm just happy the Government DOES backups of stuff, and that they work (or at least they should)."

Primary reason for using signal, auto erase.

IIRC, reel-to-reel 9 tracks tapes are required (by law) for certain treaty obligations (like exchanging missile test data with the Russians, although these days the Russians can probably just log in and look at the data directly).

"to save "$1 million per year by converting 14,000 magnetic tapes (70-year-old technology for information storage) to permanent modern digital records.""

Risking petabytes in backups to convert them to, what exactly? DVD? Spinning Rust? SSD?

These are all very expensive in maintenance, and require frequent refreshing.

And that saves only $1M?

I'm still scratching my head on how converting tapes you already have (you know, paid for and done) to something new saves anything. Surely the effort required to do that costs something, even if these new magical "digital records" were free?

Also, "permanent modern digital records"? I'm going to assume that the original tapes were "digital" as well?

I fucking hate the modern misuse of "digital" as a synonym for (a) purely file-based non-(tied-to-specific)-physical media (with the implication that all physical media are "analogue"- like, er, DVDs?), (b) anything based around "online" services or worst of all, (c) any remotely "modern" tech being compared against its older counterpart (which magically becomes analogue as soon as it's twenty-plus years old and/or obsolescent).

Fuckwits.

Not sure that autocratic bullying and lawlessness count as "the free world".

TBH, for better or worse the LotFW is the almost-as-unaccountable President of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.

Head of the European commission is accountable to the commission, which is accountable to the European parliament, which is accountable to European citizens, a group whose membership was taken from me against my will. And the European commission cared more about it's citizens than the UK government of the time did.

"And the European commission cared more about it's citizens than the UK government of the time did."

That's why your membership was taken away. They didn't want grownup supervision.

This is not the first time the US Government made dubious decisions around tape storage. Remember when we all found out they overwrote the moon landing tapes?

Magnetic tape described as "the most cost-effective and stable medium for long-term storage" is more than slightly, well, off.

Optical media is probably the most cost effective and stable (certainly most stable) medium for long term storage. In addition, it is getting hard to acquire new recording tapes, as well as drives, let alone repair parts for drives.

So, while I understand the slant here at El Reg is to be as negative as possible toward anything done under the current US administration, bending the facts goes a little far for my taste. A little balance would be welcome, but I'm not likely to aee that, I guess.

It is debatable as to whether converting from long-unused, recorded tape to optical would be a cost effective endeavor universally, but in cases where there is a concern about the long term integrity of data which might actually be useful, or the ability to read it, this should certainly be migrated, and all new long term, offline storage should be switched to optical.

What optical format do you prefer? There's Archival Disk, which is indeed designed to last fifty years and it holds a grand total of 1 TB per disk. Compared to the 18 TB per LTO9 cartridge, or even the 6 TB per cartridge if they're still using LTO7 from 2015, that's not a lot of bytes. It has one other problem though: it's been discontinued and it wasn't replaced with something newer. Other optical media I'm aware of has significantly lower per-disk capacity. So what specific optical disk do you want to use, and how do you expect it will handle the efficiency problems that tape libraries are designed to respond to?

I can't speak confidently as to its relative merits, but your claims about magnetic media aren't factual.

Both cartridges and drives are still in ample supply; based on a quick search both are available from: Amazon, Walmart, NewEgg, B&H Photo, and more. Essentially the same list as M-Disc, which I guessed to be a fair optical comparison.

@Lewis R "In addition, it is getting hard to acquire new recording tapes, as well as drives, let alone repair parts for drives."

This is a very skewed assertion as there is no storage technology for which the "repair ancient tech" problem does not exist. I mean, try plugging in your ESDI or ST506 drives!

All of the orgs that use tape on a daily basis don't seem to have an issue finding supplies of tape and new tape machines.

Perhaps you're trying to interpret their "70 year old" tech description to mean they are working with tape reels that are ancient, and therefore hardware options are limited. But no information was provided to support that take.

Given the Musk/DOGE track record, it's far more likely that they immediately consider any old tech automatically obsolete without any understanding or analysis.

"Optical media is probably the most cost effective and stable (certainly most stable) medium for long term storage."

The writable optical media I own have all rot within a decade.

Not sure how that is better than tape?

I looked and [1]CERN uses tape for their petabytes a day data streams.

So, that really works and has worked for some time now. It sounds like a solid solution. I doubt whether DOGE even has the expertise to do better.

[1] https://home.cern/science/computing/storage

I haven't used it, haven't tested it, etc, etc, but noting for fairness: M-Disc claims "up to 1000 years" of longevity (i.e. subject to storage environment, naturally). At the very least it's an optical media that you and I can buy that has tried specifically to optimise for that.

The Biden-era NIST rated it as acceptable for 100-year storage.

"a) the contract was run by service-disabled veterans"

This is of course a plus as far as Trump is concerned. We all know from numerous comments and actions that he doesn't like veterans, captured, wounded, disabled, and mangled doubly so.

Musk his probably basing this on how Twitter 'back up' their data, which is probably they dont they just replicate it to some other servers and don't have offline backups, as lets be honest no one is really going to care or notice if some Tweets disappear that were written in 2017 where government data has sometimes legally be kept indefinitely or at least for decades.