[Info-vax] SDLT 1 tape cartridge longevity?

[RobertsonEricW]

On Nov 2, 5:31 pm, mathog <dmat... at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> On Nov 2, 12:56 pm, "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilber... at comcast.net>
> wrote:
>
> > Methinks you are tilting at windmills!
>
> Vendors who break contracts, which is exactly what this is, make me
> grumpy.
>
> >Try a different brand of tape or
> > a whole different technology if you can find such.
>
> The Maxell tapes have held up much better than the Quantum brand.
> Fuji also makes some.  I have no experience
> with Fuji SDLT cartridges, their DLTtape IIIXT held up OK, but those
> were made long ago, and who knows what the quality control is like
> now.
>
> While shopping found a "new" brand "Echo", which sells _recycled_
> tapes.  See for instance:
>
>  http://www.tapeandmedia.com/detail.asp?product_id=ECHO-SDLT
>
> These come with the same lifetime guaranty that the Quantum's did.
> Hopefully for Echo "lifetime" will never mean "whatever we want it to
> mean", since if these include Quantum recycled tapes (no way to tell),
> they likely fail at exactly the same rate as non-recycled Quantum's.
>
> Regards,
>
> David Mathog

Defeinitely sounds like poor quality tapes to me. I don't have an
online reference but here is a transcription of a table from a
FujiFilm document on tape durability and lifetime:

DRIVE         DLTtape     PASSES PER        MEDIA PASSES
EQUIVALENT
MODEL       MEDIA       FULL USE              SPECIFICATION
FULL USES
------------      -------------    ----------------------
------------------------        ---------------------
SDLT-320    SDLT1               56
1,000,000                  17,857
SDLT-220    SDLT1               56
1,000,000                  17,857
DLT1,VS80    IV                   84
1,000,000                  11,905
DLT8000        IV                   52
1,000,000                  19,230
DLT7000        IV                   52
1,000,000                  19,230
DLT4000        IV                   64
1,000,000                  15,625
DLT2000XT   III, XT                64
1,000,000                  15,625
DLT2000         III                   64
500,000                   7,812
DLT600           III                   56
500,000                   8,928
DLT260           III                   24
500,000                  20,833

These values are considered conservative because they are based on
complete usage of the tape each time (i.e. the entire storage area of
the tape is consumed). In most cases, each use is considerably less
than the complete storage capacity of the tape and so you should
experience lifetimes longer than these (So FujiFilm says anyway).

Eric