Reel-to-Reel care?

From: Nico de Jong <nico_at_farumdata.dk>
Date: Wed Dec 10 09:21:15 2003

> > --On Wednesday, December 10, 2003 04:07:30 -0800 Brent Hilpert
> > <hilpert_at_cs.ubc.ca> wrote:
> >
> > > On a similar note, can someone comment on the long-term prognosis of
> > > 9-track tape? Is it still being manufactured or is everyone that
> > > still uses it relying on new-old-stock?
> >
There is something else you might want to consider. Depending on density,
tape length and block size, you might get maybe up to 80-90 megs on a tape.
That aint much, but tape (and 3480 types) has a destinctive edge on types
like DAT and Exabyte : if you encounter a read error, you can just skip the
block (depending on the software used). If you miss a block on the more
modern drives, you are simply lost, as it is almost impossible to
re-synchronize the drive.

I know that I am a "bit" biased, but my experience is that tapes many places
are still the preferred choice for data exchange.

Nico
Received on Wed Dec 10 2003 - 09:21:15 GMT

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Oct 10 2014 - 23:35:50 BST