BL> How reliable is the DAT tape? I've lost a few floppies, and at
 BL> least you don't have to contend with stretching and
 BL> print-through, with floppies.

 KR> most mid range systems use it as a backup medium these days, so
 KR> the industry has given it the thumbs up. tape is generally
 KR> regarded as good for 10 years or so, if you exercise it once a
 KR> year or so. for real archival storage though, cdr or
 KR> magneto-optical would be better.

  Leaving size out of it, is it more reliable better than floppies? 10
years sounds too good to be true. For what loss?

  The oldest tapes I ever had date back to the mid-fifties when I
recorded the goons. They were ex-ABC tapes, and when I left Newtown to
move to Concord in 1974 I checked them and they'd gone patchy. The
tape itself was probably 20 years old, and the recordings 15 years
old.

  Of course, the tape would be better now, and DAT is probably safer
than plain audio, but I wonder about no errors in 300Mb in 10 years.

 BL> I'd rather use a second hard drive for the weekly backups and
 BL> floppies for the really important stuff... somewhere else, as
 BL> you say.

 KR> corse, if you are rich enough, you just mirror your hard drive,
 KR> and fear nothing.

  Well, I was talking about backing up to an old half-size compressed
drive. It seems to cost $300 every two years to keep up with the data
storage anyway, and the old drive is only worth $100 so it's not
likely to end up on "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous."

Regards,
Bob
 
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