[Info-vax] Modern VMS (e.g. V8.4) tape installation?

[Forster, Michael]

True. Multiple archival methods versus simple backup.

On Apr 29, 2012, at 7:35 PM, "David Froble" <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:

> Michael Kraemer wrote:
>> Richard B. Gilbert schrieb:
>> 
>>> ISTR that most, if not all, of those "cartridge" tape drives were "high
>>> maintenance".  The 8mm tapes were really high maintenance.
>> 
>> This is not generally true. The drives are a pita, sometimes,
>> in particular the 8mm needed a lot of patience.
>> The data grade media, however, are quite reliable.
>> I still have bunch of them, about twenty years old,
>> and the original content is still readable.
>> I wonder if "modern" burnt CDs/DVDs will last that long.
>> 
> 
> Now I'm impressed.  20 years and the tapes still being readable isn't a bet I'd have made.
> 
> Tapes were (in my experience) good for short term backup and such, short term being in 
> months, not decades.  But now time seems to stretch out, and with old devices, and 
> sometimes horrible media (you get what you pay for) and too many stories about degradation 
> of the magnetic tape media, I just don't attempt to use tapes any more.
> 
> For my current usage, which is mainly personal, nightly image backups to disk, and 
> periodic movement of save sets to a removable disk and storage of same elsewhere seems to 
> work.
> 
> I have lost a few 50 pin SCSI disks, but restore the image save set on another disk seems 
> to have worked well.  Big problem is when I run out of spare disks ....
> 
> If you're talking real long term, I don't think anything can be considered reliable.
> 
> As for the writable and re-writable CDs and DVDs, don't leave them in the sunlight ....
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