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From: hank@masscomp.ccur.com (Hank Cohen)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Undetected error rates, high capacity storage
Message-ID: <61581@masscomp.ccur.com>
Date: 26 Dec 90 05:50:30 GMT
References: <11357@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <PCG.90Dec12174320@odin.cs.aber.ac.uk> <11393@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <PCG.90Dec21111344@odin.cs.aber.ac.uk>
Reply-To: hank@westford.ccur.com (Hank Cohen)
Organization: Concurrent Nippon Corp. - Tokyo , Japan
Lines: 12


The discussion of undetedted errors on high capacity storage brings up
a question that I have been wondering about for a while.
What is the effect of magnetic field "creep" on high capacity magnetic
disks and would it be wise to do a zero level dump reformat and
restore of such devices periodically like maybe once a year?
The question arises because of the well known phenomenon of bit rot on
magnetic tapes that leads to the recommendation that long term archive
 apes be copied once a year.  

Thanks
Hank Cohen