Douglas A. Tutty wrote:
On Fri, Jan 04, 2008 at 09:12:19AM -0800, David Brodbeck wrote:
On Jan 4, 2008, at 7:38 AM, Larry Irwin wrote:
I would not buy a used tape drive. They're finicky mechanical devices
and you really want a warranty. Every time I've bought a used tape
drive thinking I was getting a good deal it's died within a month.
Which puts DLTs out of reach for the home user. Which means that either
I archive to less reliable media (CD/DVD, hard disk) or keep everything
online and only do backups with no archives.
Why do you think DLTs are more reliable than optical media or hard
drives? My experience with tapes in general (not DLTs) certainly does
not predispose me towards that view, but I suppose DLTs could be
"different".
I've never had a CD or DVD go bad once it passed verification, and some
of my cds are from the early 1990s (Kodak Photo CDs). I *have* had
tapes in every format I've ever used, from 7-track up to DDS, go bad or
be unreadable for other reasons. I've also had a lot of the *drives* go
bad, which means I'd probably want two or three before storing anything
important on the tape format.
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