Despite the higher costs for optical media, and analysts' views that it should complement rather than replace tape, Shah said optical is his "near-line" and long-term backup technology of choice.
"Twenty years from now, if there's an image we need, we can actually access it and not wind up saying, 'Oops, it's not there,' " Shah said. "That's part of the total cost of tape. If you can't access the data, then whatever you spent on the tape was a waste."
The 300-bed hospital in Huntington, West Virginia, first began using an optical jukebox from Melbourn, England-based Plasmon PLC to store medical records storage almost five years ago. At the time, the optical platters each held about 9GB of data.
But in December, the hospital installed a $2.5 million picture-archiving and communications system (PACS) that allows doctors and technicians to view radiological images and patient records from any secure port connection.
Shah decided that the hospital needed a more sophisticated and higher-capacity backup technology, so he looked at EMC Corp.'s Centera content-addressed storage array, as well as the latest tape libraries. The Centera was too costly, and tape was still not reliable enough, he said.