Date: Sat, 03 Oct 1998 09:01:29 -0500 From: David Kelly <dkelly@hiwaay.net> To: freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Exabyte 8200 Message-ID: <199810031401.JAA06022@nospam.hiwaay.net> In-Reply-To: Message from patl@Phoenix.Volant.ORG of "Fri, 02 Oct 1998 11:34:10 PDT." <ML-3.3.907353250.4086.patl@asimov>
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patl@Phoenix.Volant.ORG writes: > > I've had very good results with Sony 8mm video tapes. Costco sells them > > here for about $3 each. > > This is likely to prove to be a false economy. 'Data' tapes and > 'video' tapes use different materials. The 'video' tapes are reported > to drasticly increase head wear. A worn out head is going to cost > you a lot more than data tapes would have... (Video tape drives > don't have the data density and integrety requirements of data drives; > so they can be made of less delicate materials and to take wear that > causes a small quantity of data loss.) > > Here in Silicon Valley, 112m data quality tapes are available for > around $8 each. > > > A cleaning tape is good to have too. > > Nearly essential. Every now and then the drive will tell you that > it needs to be cleaned. You should be prepared to do it. Cleaning > cartridges are fairly cheap; and should last quite a while, especially > if the drive isn't heavily used. (I do a single tape backup on my > 8505 every night. It asks for cleaning every three or four months; > so a single cleaning tape lasts for years.) >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. We write about 7,000 8mm tapes per year at work with about 20 Exabyte 8505's (we love tcopy and have purchased Sun workstations in the past simply because they have tcopy). Have used many brands of tape. For the last couple of years have exclusively used Sony 8mm 112M data tape. Have had such awful time with video tape screwing up my tape drives to the point they require professional cleaning that I have one drive as the "designated sacrificial goat" which is the only one used when somebody insists on sending digital data on video tape. A cleaning tape is also essential. Actually in our case, a case of cleaning tapes. Again, there are special digital versions. Again we mostly use Sony but also use Exabyte brand. OTOH: have never had any problems using digital 8mm tape in a video camera. Then again, I don't run anywhere near as many tapes thru a video camera as an Exabyte. -- David Kelly N4HHE, dkelly@nospam.hiwaay.net ===================================================================== The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its capacity -- the rest is overhead for the operating system. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message
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