Path: utzoo!lsuc!ncrcan!ontenv!soley
From: soley@ontenv.UUCP (Norman S. Soley)
Newsgroups: comp.periphs
Subject: Re: How reliable is video tape and DAT tape (for data storage)
Message-ID: <411@ontenv.UUCP>
Date: 16 Mar 88 22:35:38 GMT
References: <JW.GNUS6@sics.se> <12685@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU>
Organization: Ontario Ministry of the Environment, Toronto
Lines: 22

In article <12685@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU>, ddl@beach.cis.ufl.edu (Don Lewis) writes:
> As far as using VCR's to backup, I can't speak from personal experience,
> but I did work in the television industry for a number of years, and
> tapes were commonly used more than ten times.  Often, though, after three
> or four passes (of recording, playback is pretty much irrelevant), the
> possibility of drop-out occurring was probably greater than 50%.  Still,
> considering the cheap price of tape ($5 U.S. will get you a pretty decent
> tape), this is still not a bad deal.  I'd be interested in hearing what
> everyone else has to say about this.  

What is that 50% figure based on? 50% of the tape has dropouts? or 50%
of ten times recorded tapes have at least on dropout? The VCR backup
schemes use multiple redundancy (the sales literature says 8 copies of
everything) Sufficient to deal with case 2 but case 1 would wipe out
your backup pretty thoroughly. I also have no experience with such
machines I'm just respewing sales lit.

-- 
Norman Soley - Data Communications Analyst - Ontario Ministry of the Environment
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