From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Oct 11 21:24:12 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from pop3-3.enteract.com (pop3-3.enteract.com [207.229.143.32]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 4570C14FE4 for ; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 21:24:09 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dscheidt@enteract.com) Received: (qmail 7470 invoked from network); 12 Oct 1999 04:24:08 -0000 Received: from shell-2.enteract.com (dscheidt@207.229.143.41) by pop3-3.enteract.com with SMTP; 12 Oct 1999 04:24:08 -0000 Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 23:24:08 -0500 (CDT) From: David Scheidt To: Greg Lehey Cc: Christian Weisgerber , freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Why use tape for backups? In-Reply-To: <19991012111734.N78191@freebie.lemis.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Tue, 12 Oct 1999, Greg Lehey wrote: > > About 18 months. > > > How many cycles for each tape? 10? 20 if you're reckless? > > I must be reckless. I've only had a few DDS tapes wear out, after > about 100 passes. If somebody could convince me that DDS-3 is more > reliable, I might go for it. > In my experience, DDS tapes last much longer if you only use them in one tape drive. Use them in multiple drives, and their longivity and reliability seems to fall off the charts. I wouldn't miss them if they were to fall off the earth tomorrow. (Aside from all the data I have one them, of course.) DDS-3 is better, but I don't have enough long term experience with it to know how much. Even on the machines I have with DDS-3 drives, I still have to use them in DDS-1 mode, because we have to read the tape on any of our machines. David Scheidt To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message