Tape Will Outlive Disk: Page 2 of 2

As we discussed in our article, SSDs Are Cost Effective Now, the price decline continues unabated on solid state disk (SSD) drives and the capacities continue to increase. Add to this the substantial speed advantages that SSD enjoys over mechanical drives as well as the "greenness" of the SSD drives, and you are left with several compelling reasons to transition to SSD.

Now clearly disks won't be thrown out to the curb overnight, but their role acting as a primary storage medium to an archive and disk backup medium may be complete within the next five years. As tape technology progresses through advancements in speed and access, it may become the platform for rapid recoveries of systems that are not replicated. At that point disks will be relegated to single file recoveries that are not time sensitive (i.e. archives).

Eventually, your children's children will look at a mechanical disk like our children look at a floppy disks: something so primitive that they can't believe you ever used it.