Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1998 19:43:30 -0700 (PDT) From: dan@math.berkeley.edu (Dan Strick) To: mike@smith.net.au Cc: freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Strong opinions, anyone? Message-ID: <199807010243.TAA09636@math.berkeley.edu>
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> > } > The Exabyte 8200's are cheap, ... > Yes. Buy several, so you have a set of spare parts. ... > > } > reliable ... > > Mature technology. Built to be used in data centers, not toys like ... > I think "notorious" is a more accurate term than "mature". The 8200 is The drives seem to wear out. It is not just the heads, which have an official lifetime stated in tape-motion-hours, but other unknown parts of the drives that go bump in the night. I used to send 8200s back to the factory for repair, get them back in top operating condition, and then watch the soft error rate slowly climb back up to unacceptable levels in a period of months. I suspect the drives would be ok if they received continuous massive preventive maintenance, like computer equipment was supposed to get once upon a time. There is another problem. The medium is not that robust. I once tried to read archival 8200 tapes of various ages, just to see if it could be done. The tapes had been kept in an air conditioned machine room for since having been written. I found that I could only read (without error) only about half of the tapes that were about 3 years old. I honestly don't know if I would have had much better luck with 9-track open-reel tape or with Babylonian clay tablets, though the total number of bits lost would certainly have been much smaller. Dan Strick dan@math.berkeley.edu To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message
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