Just about no one bothers to buy tape drives for backing up TB-sized disks anymore. It is far, far cheaper to send the backups to an off-site disk array.

But the tape drives I use (200GB without compression) streams their data - they do not show up as any file system.

Yes, the SD cards show up as a file system. Strange? No - the card manufacturer did ship them with a file system. Any OS that doesn't mount SD cards, CF cards, USB thumb drives etc as file systems would be considered broken. The manfacturers did design, manufacture and ship products intended to be accessed as file systems. Of course M$ does use them as file systems. No different if I connect your SD card in my PDA - except that my PDA is old and can't use todays huge SD cards.


Maybe because the camera manufacturer - just like all other camera manufacturers - designed it to identify itself as a removable-media USB disk? Blame Microsoft for this if you like, but the design decision was made by the camera manufacturer based on the responses from their users. The camera, at the same time, also supports other serial protocols. For example for tethered use, where the PC can send settings and commands and the image gets streamed back to the computer. This too by choice of the camera manufacturer, and not M$.


Oh yes. You hate them tremendously. You probably have some mental note that since IBM was involved in some of the releases (IBM-DOS), you can make use of MS-DOS without feeling as bad. Thing is - you are still reliving 1985 again and again. Anything happening after 1985 are borked in your view. The PC hardware got destroyed and M$ Windows started to enforce use of device drivers instead of allowing direct hw access. Big regressions in your view.

Waste of what bandwidth? I don't think too many Windows users with Internet access considers Windows itself to consume any significant amount of bandwidth. And if running without Internet, there would be very limited needs to retrieve any security fixes. The only time bandwidth may be an issue is if you connect your computer using your mobile phone and Windows decides to download the latest updates. But this isn't unique to Windows. A large percentage of applications has online update support. Some checks for new versions and then ask if they should download. Some ask if they should check. Some have a setting to let you answer once and for all if you want manual or automatic updating. But anyway - bandwidth discussions are totally irrelevant to M$ use of device drivers or devices connecting as block or stream devices. You are just doing your normal "random walk" when cornered after having said something totally incorrect.


Not sure what you are trying to say. Not sure you, yourself, knows what that sentence has with this discussion. Most better backup software supports compression and encryption. This is totally irrelevant to if you backup to a stream-connected tape drive or a mounted file system. Just one more divergent thread. SCSI has a command set. Some commands are adapted for tape drives. Some for disk drives. None of them cares about encryption of compression. And no difference when you connect to a device "tape1" or if you used MS-DOS and talked directly with the hardware. You still told the tape drive: Start recording, and then sent blocks of data to the drive. And if you sent the data too slow, then the tape drive did have to stop and rewind. Todays high-end tape drives have gained the ability to slow the tape feed speed in case the applicatin sends data slowly just to avoid the wear and tear and time loss from constant small rewinds. But still basically the same as 10 or 20 years ago even if the 16-bit applications have become 32-bit or 64-bit applications. And it still doesn't matter if the tape drive is connected to the floppy controller, an ISA connector, a USB cable, FireWire or a SCSI card. The security and the use is almost the same anyway.


I see you have limited experience with real-life companies. How many companies do you think have lost their taped data because a virus have gained access to the tape drive? How many companies do you think have lost their taped data because the backup software used a proprietary format for the streamed data?

When you get a bit more experience with backup solutions, you will find that "real" backup solutions uses standard software but uses encryption keys. Without the encryption keys, you can't access the data. But the encryption is standard and the hardware is standard. So if the computer burns to cinder you can restore the data from another system as long as you have copies of the encryption key in a bank vault or at home, hidden behind some books or wherever you think is safe.

Another thing you seem to forget is the availability of access rights. Most Windows users gets into troubles because they just so much like to run as administrators. Most Linux users do not run into troubles because they do not run as root. If the user who brings in a virus doesn't run as a user with access right to the tape drive, then the virus will not be able to erase any tape in the first place.

But this is yet one more side track, that doesn't have anything with your claim:


The "old" and "very reliable" systems had huge security issues. You are basically living the "security by obscurity" lie. Huge number of companies gets burned every year because they think obscurity means security. Any hardware that have ever been reverse-engineered to get Linux support have the required access code available. As long as there is a way to run foreign applications on the machine, it's easy to make your 20 year old tape drives erase themselves.

But besides the large security holes they often had, they also often managed to be "very unreliable" when it came time to restore the data. It has happened thousands and thousands of times that your proprietary backup software couldn't retrieve the data. Maybe because of a timing glitch. Maybe because of a drop-out in the magnetic layer. Maybe because the decompression resulted in an overflow for some data. The majority of data loss is still from backups that can't be read back, or of files that wasn't part of the backup sets. Or from backup volumes getting full and no one noticing it. But these data losses can be blamed on stupidity. People not caring and verifying the backup process. It is far worse with the data losses because you can't find a new software license or required hardware to restore the backup after a fire.

If looking at virus issues, I can guarantee that there are thousands of times more likely that people get into virus troubles by getting the virus taped on all backup generations, thereby failing to have an unaffected tape copy, than it is that a virus accesses the tape drive and erases the data.

But this is yet one more side issue. A backup solution should have access rights. A virus shouldn't be able to send commands to a tape drive. And disk-based backups should be sent to a write-only device that stores new copies of changed data without allowing modifications to existing backups. That's not a M$ decision. It's your decision. Or mine. Blaming M$ if someone connects a USB drive with the only copy of all their photos and a virus wipes the photos is as stupid as blaming Ford because John Doe decides to turn the wheel and drive into a tree. And it is irrelevant to this discussion for the simple reason that a USB disk is designed and manufactured with the intention of it appearing as a disk. It will look as a disk if connected to a Windows machine, a MAC or a Linux. The only machines it will not show up as a disk on is the machines that lacks the hardware or software for USB access of disk units.

Let's face it. My Bluetooth headset does not show up as a disk. Why? Because it doesn't contain any feature that would have made the manufacturer want it to enumerate as a disk.

My scanner doesn't show up as a disk. Why? Because it doesn't supprot scanning to any memory card for later retrieval.

My printer doesn't show up as a disk. But it does show up as an FTP server when using TCP/IP. Why? Because the manufacturer made that decision.

My monitors doesn't show up as disks. Why? Because the USB interface is intended to control the monitors, which can be done very well with some form of serial commands.

My phone does show up as several disks (if I select that feature in the phone). Why? Because Nokia made the decision that some customers wants to drag/drop files between their phone and their PC. M$ was never involved in that decision.

My KVM-switch doesn't show up as a disk. No need - it's enough for it to support commands to switch inputs and to be able to send back mouse and keyboard events. Still no M$ involved in that design decision.

My USB-connected audio devices streams the data. No disk interface since they don't support capture to local file system or playback from local file system. The PC file systems are more than enough for any data capture or playback. No file system for the reason that the manufacturer didn't add any. Not a M$ decision.

All of my cameras enumerate as multiple devices. Both disks and streamed devices. Design choices by the manufacturers. No - no camera from M$.

Turn in any which direction you want. Your claim:

is still borked. No truth involved. If a device shows up as a file system, then that is a decision made by the manufacturer. And unless there are bugs or availability issues somewhere with the drivers or hw interfaces, you will get the same result from any other recent OS intended for general-purpose computers.

And once more - your comment:

clearly shows how you have totally failed to identify the major security issues. Having a little used system saves you from a one-in-a-billion security attack but makes you vulnerable to one-in-a-hundred data loss from failure to replace the sw or hw after a failure.

If you do google for "accidents" where companies have lost data after attacks, you will also notice something interesting.
A number of incidents are with online raids without own protection. So the machine that sends the backups also have the access rights to erase everything. That is similar to the stupidity of keeping the backups in the drive. An online media is an online media whatever type of media or interface that is involved.

But a large number of incidents are from disgruntled employees. They have degaussed the tapes or reformatted the drives. Media type or interface hasn't really mattered for the simple reason that the company have failed to store multiple copies of data at locations a single individual haven't had access rights to. The user with a key to the computer can't be stopped from erasing the data based on crypto keys or use of a serial cable. The user might just as well take a lighter and melt the tapes if that is the fastest/easisest way available.

Luckilly, the above happens not too often, even if it may get a lot of press attention. But hardly any larger organisation have not managed to get data locked in on too old hardware or produced by old and incompatible and very, very proprietary software. I have helped a number of companies. Tape backups lost because of a virus - almost unheard of. Tape backups lost because of bad backup software or similar - plenty. I once saw a report claiming that 40% of IT managers have suffered failed restores, and that up to 20% suffered from failures in capturing all data. If one IT manager in a million gets a tape wiped by a virus, it would then be a very, very tiny problem. Especially since there should be more than one tape generation, and the tape backups just has to be verified regularly.