Path: utzoo!utgpu!cunews!bnrgate!brchh104!brchs1!bnr.ca!rice.edu!sun-spots-request
From: shz@zarquon.pgd.hawaii.edu (Stan H. Zisk)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun
Subject: Exabyte 8-mm tapes - no probs...
Keywords: Hardware
Message-ID: <2846@brchh104.bnr.ca>
Date: 10 May 91 13:03:00 GMT
Sender: news@brchh104.bnr.ca
Organization: Sun-Spots
Lines: 27
Approved: Sun-Spots@rice.edu
X-Original-Date: Wed, 1 May 91 12:59:48 HST
X-Refs:  Original: v10n80
X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 98, message 17
X-Note: Submissions: sun-spots@rice.edu, Admin: sun-spots-request@rice.edu

Douglas Harvey of Ronald J. Krumm writes:

>1) We have been having a lot of I/O errors with our 8mm tape systems.
>   Up until recently we had been using Sony P6-120MP Video 8 tapes,
>   at around $7 each.  Now we are using Maxell HS-8/112 data tapes,
>   at around $13 each or so.  The I/O errors don't occur nearly so
>   often, but they still do occur -- is this to be expected?  

I assume these are recoverable errors showing up during "dump"'s - 

I have about 3 dozen Exa tapes, all either Sony or Fuji P6-120 metal, $7
to $9 each, dating back 18 months or so.  Most are tar archives rather
than file-system dumps.  I can't remember seeing even ONE error during the
writing of all of them (but there may be an auto-rewrite-errors in the
"tar" program) - and any restoring I've done (admittedly no more than a
file a month or so) from even the oldest tapes has gone without a hitch.

We have only 7 or 8 Exabyte 8200 drives here on an equal number of
machines (Sparc-1[+]'s and one 4/260), using the standard OS 4.1
/dev/[n]rst# drivers (with the one bug-fix to take care of the rewind
problem on the Sparc's).  I haven't monitored all the users carefully, but
have heard no problems with writing or reading to the Exabytes in over a
year of archiving use by 10 - 15 people on all the machines.

Stan Zisk
University of Hawaii Planetary Geosciences Division.