On Mon, 14 Mar 2005, Paul Koning wrote: 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

From: "Vintage Computer Festival" <vcf at siconic.com> FWIW, I've never seen Archives on IBM (I suppose you are thinking of AS/400, S/36 and the likes), but loads of Tandbergs. Nico

On Mon, 14 Mar 2005, Steven N. Hirsch wrote: I've found the Archive 2150S in a lot of Sun stuff, and most recently in the Stellar graphics supercomputer. Plus a lot in other machines but it's not worth the time to wrack my brain to remember which. Perhaps IBM was fond of Tandberg, but everyone else was fond of Archive. I have a guy I sell tape drives to in batches and most of what he requests are the Archive 2150S. He's a repair shop with lots of gubment contracts. -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

----- Original Message ----- From: "Nico de Jong" <nico at FARUMDATA.DK> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Monday, March 14, 2005 11:07 AM Subject: Re: Mag Tapes was RE: Got Videotrax card working is About a year or so ago I restored over 100 Colorado 120mb QIC tapes used single error on any of them. I find the old QIC 120mb tapes to be highly reliable, but I think my Travan 1.6/3.2GB DITTO drive is a POS and have since quit using it. I have a couple DAT 2/4GB and 4/8GB drives that work ok, but I have only had them for a few years so I don't know how reliable they are over longer periods of time. Backing up to 16x DVD+R disks is much faster and cheaper, I wonder if I can read the files in 10 years.

Teo Zenios writes: I apologize if I am moving this off-topic, but archival longevity of media may be a good topic by itself for the computer preservationist. I have studied this quite a bit. My first conclusion, including that the "100 year" claims we have all seen are baloney. A research article appeared in the German version of Q't magazine (unless I miss-spelled that), where they did some tests on raw error rate on just burned DVD+R media, using some $50,000 equipment. None of the media they tested had a low enough raw error rate to meet the requirements of the DVD+R standard. Yet they sell it. (Mitsubishi did the best.) Then there are many hobbiests looking at raw error rates on DVD media using Lite-On drives with firmware than can report on raw errors. My overall conclusion is that most DVD media on the market sold by no-names, and by the names Sony, Maxell, Memorex, 3M Imation, etc is not very good. These companies re-badge whaterver is cheapest this month from whatever factory. My least favorite factory is CMC Magnetics Corporatioin Europe. Next worst in my view are some Korean and Taiwanese factories (K-Well, In Young, Lead Data Great Quality GQ). TDK seems to be only advertised brand that makes their own and that you can actually buy in a USA retail store, unless the store carries Verbatim. I think Pioneer and Verbatim buy their media from the good Japanese companies, Mitsubishi, Taiyo Yuden, and Mitsumi. Anyway, Pioneer and Verbatim consistently have low raw error rates. A low error rate when freshly burned gives greater margin that as the errors increase as the media ages, error correction can still take care of it. Also, these companies have better engineering about the life span of the organic dyes and such used in the data layer. So when I want it to last, I do this: 1) Use a good burner with low raw error rate after burn/read and good media-to-other-machine cross compatibility. I used to recommend the Pioneer DVR-105 and below, but the DVR-107 and DVR-108 are poor at this. Now I recommend BenQ DW1620 ($52) DVD+-RW double layer drive. Most burners have new firmware you can flash even if you bought it yesterday. A lot of the effort in the new firmware is decreasing the error rate on some media, so it is often worth flashing it. 2) My first choice of media is either Pioneer or Verbatim DVD-R, followed by DVD+R from the same two makers. Third choice brand is TDK. I don't trust much else. Double sided and double layer DVD are a little imature at this point. 3) The freeware Windoze program DVDinfo.exe will tell you who made your mysterious media (reads it off the media). E.g. MCC001 is made by Mitsubishi. 4) All RW media (DVD-RW DVD+RW CD-RW) have poor archival life. Think about it: with RW, instead of burning a pit in the data layer, you are fooling around with glossy or matte finish depending on how quickly a melted liquid re-freezes. Official tests, and my own tests, show poor life. A little sunlight-UV can erase it. 5) I don't burn more than 85% of the capacity of a DVD. DVDs are a sandwich, lexan (polycarbonate) on both sides, data layer chemistry in the middle. The spiral starts on the inside (opposite LP records). If you leave 3/4" unused at the outside edge, it will take longer before the Ozone and 02 and other environmental exposures that attack the data chemistry at the edges of the lexan sandwitch actually reach your data. So on a "4.7GB" disk which in real life could hold 4.3GB, I burn 3.8GB. 6) DVD-R or DVD+R is better than CD-R, because it is a sandwich. DVD also has stronger error correction. CD-R often dies from the label side, by getting bumped against the drive tray, the jewel case, a pen... The paint layer that protects your data on the label side is very thin and fragile. CD-R also die from chemical errosion from ozone, fingers, marking pens, etc on the label side. I write on them only in the center no-data area. DVDs, being a sandwich, don't have those problems. Richard Bristol (the same guy who recently asked for help reading his 9-track mag tapes)

Eric Smith wrote: Based on my experience, this isn't true by a longshot. After no less than three occaisions where I have lost data stored on DVD-RW media (all three with different media brands), I stopped doing it. I only use rewritable media for testing burns now, never for archival storage. As for the topic of "how long does DVD-R media last?", I feel it's irrelevant because newer, popular standards come along every decade and we retrofit our data to meet them as it inevitably grows. From personal experience: 1985: Stored my data on about 100 360K DSDD floppies 1990: Purchased computer with 3.5" DSHD drive; copied my 360K floppies to about 25 DSHD disks. 1993: Data grown to 200 DSHD floppies; stored all of them on single QIC tape. 1996: Data grown to 4 QIC tapes; stored all four onto two CDRs. 2002: Data grown to 200 CDRs (blame broadband!); spent a week merging duplicates and deleting redundant info, recompressing to more optimal formats, burnt them onto ~30 DVD-Rs. 2005: Data grown to 200 DVD-Rs; archival storage is 3-4 DLT7000 tapes. For extra paranoia, I never threw out any of the older medium (although I do recycle the disks as necessary, like when I need a spare 3.5" to make a boot disk or something). -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/

Richard wrote: The only claim of 100 years I've seen from a reputable vendor was Kodak for their gold CD-R media (not the later gold/silver alloy stuff), and it was backed up by real laboratory testing including accelerated aging. The 100 years was actually fairly conservative. The silver crap can't possibly last anywhere near 100 years; it only takes a few years for oxygen to seep through and oxidizie it enough for a measurably higher error rate. Eventually the entire disk will oxidize enough to be unreadable. Doesn't happen to gold media. Unfortunately gold CD-Rs have gotten really expensive, and gold DVD media doesn't seem to be available in speeds faster than 2x. Taiyo-Yuden claimed that the slightly lower reflectivity of gold (vs. unoxidized silver) together with the lower reflectivity of the dyes used for 4x and faster media made use of gold unworkable. Eric