On 8/21/2025 9:27 PM, Jeffrey Walton wrote:
On Thu, Aug 21, 2025 at 6:15 PM home user via users <users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:Good morning, (background) * Something went wrong with a back-up to a USB-3.0 stick this past May. Most everything was recovered, but not everything. I was told that the stick itself was probably not what failed. There are a few other more likely causes of the failure, but I cannot diagnose it. One major possibility is that the desktop on which I was trying to read it damaged some of the contents of the stick. * Many of you might recall 3.5 inch (about 8.8 cm), 1.44 MB floppys from back in the late 1980s. The disc cases had "a rectangular hole in one corner which, if obstructed, write-enables the disk. A sliding detented piece can be moved to block or reveal the part of the rectangular hole that is sensed by the drive." (from wikipedia). * For me, back-ups are written regularly, but searched or read rarely. (So write speed is more important than read speed.) I am looking for a way of doing back-ups such the media can be hardware write-protected when wanting to find or recover something from back-up. My back-ups are typically tens of gigabytes each, and I like to keep at least 3. (requirements) * local (not cloud or other internet). * at least 128 GB, more is better. * write speed as good as or better than USB-3.2. (very strongly preferred) * write lockable and unlockable, just like them old 3.5 inch, 1.44 MB floppys. Note that I want hardware locking and unlocking (like those floppies), not software locking/unlocking (such as with command line options). (preferred) * re-writable as opposed to write once only. Blu-ray: is write-once-only, and is much too slow (4.5 MB/sec). SDXC: some is lockable, but is too slow (100 MB/sec). By comparison, I read that USB-3.2 realistically does 500-2000 MB/sec. What do you recommend? LTO, like LTO-10. LTO tapes usually have a write-protect switch.Older LTO works fine, too. I still have LTO-6 at my house for archiving my important stuff. I move the LTO tape into the shed in my backyard in case the house burns down.
Thank-you, Jeffrey. I did not know about LTO. The price of the media is tolerable. The write-protect capability is nice. But the hardware is expensive ($thousands) for a stand-alone home desktop. Looks good for professional and commercial shops. Also, the speed for LTO-9 (400MB/sec) is less than USB-3.2. -- _______________________________________________ users mailing list -- users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
