From owner-freebsd-hardware  Sat Oct  3 14:54:17 1998
Return-Path: <owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG>
Received: (from majordom@localhost)
          by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id OAA05587
          for freebsd-hardware-outgoing; Sat, 3 Oct 1998 14:54:17 -0700 (PDT)
          (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG)
Received: from pegasus.com (pegasus.com [206.127.225.31])
          by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id OAA05580
          for <freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG>; Sat, 3 Oct 1998 14:54:12 -0700 (PDT)
          (envelope-from richard@pegasus.com)
Received: by pegasus.com (8.6.8/PEGASUS-2.2)
	id LAA10068; Sat, 3 Oct 1998 11:53:27 -1000
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 1998 11:53:27 -1000
From: richard@pegasus.com (Richard Foulk)
Message-Id: <199810032153.LAA10068@pegasus.com>
In-Reply-To: David Kelly <dkelly@hiwaay.net>
       "Re: Exabyte 8200" (Oct  3,  9:01am)
X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.2.5 10/14/92)
To: David Kelly <dkelly@hiwaay.net>, freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: Exabyte 8200
Sender: owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG
Precedence: bulk
X-Loop: FreeBSD.org

} >From experience: do *NOT* use 8mm video tapes in Exabyte tape drives. 
} If you rewind and verify, the data is there. But is often lost 6 months 
} or a year later. Video tape seems to be very sensitive to being read in 
} a different tape drive than the data was written with. Possibly 
} related to the lubricant used on video tapes being different than for 
} real data tapes.

Rewind and verify is unnecessary on Exabytes.  They do their own verify.
That's one of the reasons they're so robust.  If a write fails they just
write again on the next section of tape.

I've had good results with 10-year old tapes written on various drives.
Mostly on Sony tapes.

Compatibility and longevity haven't been a problem.  There were some
compatibility problems when Exabytes were new, but have long-since
been fixed.

Data quality tapes are necessary for the higher density drives.  The
8200's work fine with good quality video tapes.

On anything above an 8200 video tapes are not recommended.  On 8200's
they are the right choice.


Richard

To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message