On Mon, 14 Mar 2005, Paul Koning wrote:
>>>> "Joe" == Joe R <rigdonj at cfl.rr.com> writes:
Joe> At 11:14 PM 3/12/05 -0500, James Fogg wrote:
> Over the years I've learned to never
trust tape of any kind.
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.
Hmm. When you condemn QIC cartridges, I hope this is restricted only to
the smaller format media (as used by AST, Irwin and others long-departed).
Certainly, the full-sized QIC media like DC6525, Magnus 1.0, etc. were
routinely used for backing up and restoring "real" computers. I never had
any problems with the large cartridges, although you did have to be
careful whose drive you used (Wangtek and Archive were exquisite pieces of
crap; Tandberg seems to have been the "Gold Standard" for serious use and
was OEM equipment for IBM, Sun, DEC and others.)
Steve