On (17 Feb 96) Bob Lawrence wrote to Keith Richardson...





 KR> a tape is much more convenient, you just put all your data into

 KR> easily defined sub-directories and set up a batch job to back

 KR> them up. unless you only have a tiny amount of personal stuff

 KR> you wont get all of it onto one floppy, so you'll have to sit

 KR> and swap floppies where, with the tape, i can go and do

 KR> something else while the backup progresses.



 BL>   How reliable is the DAT tape? I've lost a few floppies, and at least

 BL> you don't have to contend with stretching and print-through, with

 BL> floppies.



most mid range systems use it as a backup medium these days, so the

industry has given it the thumbs up. tape is generally regarded as good

for 10 years or so, if you exercise it once a year or so. for real

archival storage though, cdr or magneto-optical would be better.



 BL>   It might be the sort of stuff I save: documents and drawings, with a

 BL> little source code now. I've never lost one of those I wasn't able to

 BL> recover, either in the file itself or with a backup I could patch. I'd

 BL> rather use a second hard drive for the weekly backups and floppies for

 BL> the really important stuff... somewhere else, as you say.



corse, if you are rich enough, you just mirror your hard drive, and fear

nothing.



                        Keith



... I have a memory, I just forgot where I put it.



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