26 Nov
2019
26 Nov
'19
3:08 a.m.
I'm not an expert on mag tapes, but it makes sense to me that 9-track
tapes, where the tracks "line up" when the tape is wound onto a reel,
suffer more "print-through" than helical scan tapes, where tracks are not
aligned with those under them on a reel. I recall a suggestion that 9-track
tapes should be mounted and rewound once in a while, to reduce
print-through. We used Exabytes for disk backups for years, back when tape
capacity exceeded disk capacity. I doubt I'll see that again, but, as noted
I'm not an expert on mag tapes.
On Mon, Nov 25, 2019 at 1:35 PM Arthur Krewat <krewat(a)kilonet.net> wrote:
On 11/25/2019 12:45 PM, Larry McVoy wrote:
On Mon, Nov 25, 2019 at 12:40:22PM -0500, Arthur
Krewat wrote:
The Exabyte 5GB and up stuff was pretty good. LTOs, after having worked
with them for the past 13 years, I can definitely say, are quit awesome.
DLT tapes and especially robots, well, it took HP about 5 years to get
the firmware right for a certain robot, the model of which, I don't
recall ...
art k.
PS: DAT 4mm tape drives, especially whatever Sun
was using, were awful.
It's no secret that I enjoyed my years at Sun, but I
can't defend these
drives, I had the same experience. When I look back on it, the only
tapes that I remember being reliable where the 9 track reel to reel
and the QIC-150. Once it got to GB sized tapes, everything seemed
like crap.