8 mm tapes

[Paul Anderson]

I have several hundred extra tapes, including the 8mm 112, 160, and 170. If
anyone has need of any, feel free to send me your wish list off list.

Thanks, Paul

On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 11:46 AM, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:

> On 24 Sep 2010 at 9:43, Dave McGuire wrote:
>
> >    It took a few years of running double backups until we got a truly
> > reliable tape system: DLT.  That was 1995, and I am still sold on DLT
> > (and its descendants) now.  Super fast, super reliable.  My home
> > network's backups are running to a 64-tape juke with four SDLT-220
> > drives.
>
> We spent about 13 years recommending backup media for a number of
> government agencies, starting in about 1988.  This was in a field
> application--i.e., not a permanent installation, but rather a "snatch
> and grab" sort of affair.
>
> At the time, we standardized on SCSI, being one of the few external-
> device interfaces with a standard attached to it.
>
> Intially, the most popular was the Iomega Bernoulli drives (5.25").
> Heavy, yes, but very reliable and reasonably fast.  A few also used
> the DC-600  (6150, 6250) size QIC media.  Not quite as
> straightforward as Bernoulli, but all in all, not bad.
>
> DDS (4mm tape) was a nightmare.  About all the devices had going for
> them was cost (for read-after-write medium, it was pretty good) and
> capacity.  I've not found long-term (>10 years) stability to be very
> good.
>
> 8mm (Exabyte) tape was most popular with the larger agencies and
> performed quite well.  The biggest problem is that it was Exabyte-
> proprietary and so the drives were single-sourced.
>
> After that, the next step was high-capacity MO (e.g. PMC Apex 4GB).
> The medium wasn't bad, but the drives weren't made for field use and
> failed frequently.  PMC got to be overwhelmed with their swap-repair
> service and eventually declared bankruptcy.
>
> DLT was briefly popular (reliability was great), media and drive cost
> was high, but using commodity hard drives eventually won out.
>
> For me, there are always surprises.  I recently came across a cache
> of backup tapes I made in 1988 using an Irwin (EZTape?) DC-1000
> minicart drive. Every single one of the dozen backups was readable.
> Sometimes, you just never can tell.
>
> But you can keep your Datasonix Pereos drives.  One of the largest
> publicity blitzes for a non-working product that I've ever seen.
>
> --Chuck
>
>