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

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2012-04-30 02:28, David Froble 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 ....

Tapes in general are pretty good. I read off a number of DECtapes 
created in the mid 70s this christmas, with no problems.
1/2" tapes also usually give me no problems, even at similar age. 
Normally 1600 bpi, but some also at 800 bpi. (That's what you had back 
then...)

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol