On Sun, Nov 26, 2006 at 12:20:22PM -0500, Len Boyle wrote: > An interesting topic. > > Until a few years ago we had an 1600/6500bpi 9-track tape drive that had > reached a state where the foam insulation in the box (used for noise > reduction) would fall apart with a touch. And this tape drive was newer then > the 800bpi tape drives. But those electronics would just keep on working. But > you can still buy new reel tape drives that take up much less space and cost > much less then the old stk or ibm tape drives. > > We had a rule of thump that those old 9-track tapes would only last about 7 > years and would have to be recorded after that. But I have seen older tapes > read. > I believe a number of cdroms would not even last that long. > > Quantum claims a 30 year archive time for the dlt. I know that time period > was not good for an active tape as they could wear out in a shorter time with > only a few hundred uses. > > The libraries assume at least 100 years for micro-films if made of the > correct materials, processed correctly and stored in the correct environment. > > And paper made of the correct materials, processed correctly and stored in > the correct environment can last hundreds of years. > > I remember seeing a little news piece a number of years ago that Rockwell > were researching machines that would write a hologram on a micro-fiche (index > card size piece of film). If the micro-fiche was damaged the data could still > be read. But I never saw them on the marketplace. > > I have also seen talk of using fancy barcodes to record programs and data on > paper, which would last longer then magnetic and optical media. > > len > I carve my backups into stone tablets. I think there's a patch for rsync, too.
-- Ian Kilgore echo "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" | tr pzfwxt ikagno
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