<HTML ><HEAD ><TITLE >Tapes</TITLE ><META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.63 "><LINK REL="HOME" TITLE="The Linux System Administrator's Guide" HREF="index.html"><LINK REL="UP" TITLE="Using Disks and Other Storage Media" HREF="c955.html"><LINK REL="PREVIOUS" TITLE="CD-ROMs" HREF="x1057.html"><LINK REL="NEXT" TITLE="Formatting" HREF="x1079.html"></HEAD ><BODY CLASS="SECT1" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#840084" ALINK="#0000FF" ><DIV CLASS="NAVHEADER" ><TABLE WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TH COLSPAN="3" ALIGN="center" >The Linux System Administrator's Guide: Version 0.7</TH ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="x1057.html" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="80%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="bottom" >Chapter 6. Using Disks and Other Storage Media</TD ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="x1079.html" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"></DIV ><DIV CLASS="SECT1" ><H1 CLASS="SECT1" ><A NAME="AEN1073" >6.5. Tapes</A ></H1 ><P >A tape drive uses a tape, similar <A NAME="AEN1076" HREF="#FTN.AEN1076" >[1]</A > to cassettes used for music. A tape is serial in nature, which means that in order to get to any given part of it, you first have to go through all the parts in between. A disk can be accessed randomly, i.e., you can jump directly to any place on the disk. The serial access of tapes makes them slow.</P ><P >On the other hand, tapes are relatively cheap to make, since they do not need to be fast. They can also easily be made quite long, and can therefore contain a large amount of data. This makes tapes very suitable for things like archiving and backups, which do not require large speeds, but benefit from low costs and large storage capacities.</P ></DIV ><H3 CLASS="FOOTNOTES" >Notes</H3 ><TABLE BORDER="0" CLASS="FOOTNOTES" WIDTH="100%" ><TR ><TD ALIGN="LEFT" VALIGN="TOP" WIDTH="5%" ><A NAME="FTN.AEN1076" HREF="x1073.html#AEN1076" >[1]</A ></TD ><TD ALIGN="LEFT" VALIGN="TOP" WIDTH="95%" ><P >But completely different, of course.</P ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><DIV CLASS="NAVFOOTER" ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"><TABLE WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="x1057.html" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="index.html" >Home</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="x1079.html" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >CD-ROMs</TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="c955.html" >Up</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" >Formatting</TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ></BODY ></HTML >