Mag Tapes was RE: Got Videotrax card working

Joe> At 11:14 PM 3/12/05 -0500, James Fogg wrote: Joe> That's been my experience. I've never been able to get a tape Joe> backup that worked. That includes brand new ones, DATs and Joe> everything else. I know tapes have been a mainstay in the Joe> computer field but I've had nothing but trouble with them. My view is that there are PC class tapes and real tapes. Real tapes include classic half inch reel, DLT, and presumably IBM' cartridges (I haven't used those). The most obvious nasty example of PC class tapes are QIC cartridges. DAT is similar -- those are miniature video tapes, forced into pretending to be data tapes. It doesn't help when trade press reviewers don't take data integrity seriously. Some years ago there was a review article about backup software. The reviewers did some restore testing. Good of them to do that. Some of the programs tested didn't reliably restore data, so they were docked 30 points or so. That's amazing. The only correct answer would be to unconditionally flunk such programs, because the value of a backup program that can't restore reliably is obviously zero, not any higher value... paul