Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!ncar!gatech!uflorida!beach.cis.ufl.edu!ddl From: ddl@beach.cis.ufl.edu (Don Lewis) Newsgroups: comp.periphs Subject: Re: How reliable is video tape and DAT tape (for data storage) Message-ID: <13205@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> Date: 19 Mar 88 15:09:58 GMT References: <12685@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> <411@ontenv.UUCP> Sender: news@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU Reply-To: ddl@beach.cis.ufl.edu (Don Lewis) Organization: UF CIS Department Lines: 15 Summary: Clarification of drop-out rate I didn't state my experience very well. When I referred to the dropout rate of 50%, I should have specified 50% of what. Well, what I meant was that after 3 or 4 recording passes, the possibility of any tape developing a "major" dropout (not counting the natural low quality at the beginning of the tape, and lasting for longer than 5 seconds) was about 50%. But, this is just a rough estimate, and (after keeping tedious logs for a year) we discovered that even among tapes from the same manufacturer and the same batch had different times before dropout occurred. What it comes down to is that you really can't place any high (or what I consider high) rate of reliability on the tape medium. And, you have to realize that even with everything being recorded "8 times", if a dropout lasts long enough, you'll lose that data. -Don Lewis University of Florida