[rescue] Re: Re: Quick EXB-210 questions

[James Lockwood]

On Sun, 26 Aug 2001, Robert Novak wrote:

> I have trouble believing any report that has no downsides, but maybe you
> haven't run into the downside yet. Or maybe DLT is actually perfect except
> for noise and slow access time and increased pass count. Or maybe it
> really has been around longer than CD technology... I know I have CDs that
> are 15 years old and still work. How many DLT tapes do you have that are
> that old and still read without errors?

I don't trust truly "I couldn't live without this" data to any form of
magnetic media.  Anything truly important goes onto Kodak Tech Pan, and a
copy goes into my safety deposit box.

Why?  Microfilm is in a truly unambiguous and easy to interpret format.
Even after a nuclear holocaust, I could access it using nothing more than
a bright light source and relatively simple optics.  Silver emulsions are
known to have a century+ lifetime if properly stored.  Will I be able to
find a DLT drive in 10 years?  Certainly.  50 years?  Probably, though
they will be expensive and rare.  If my grandchildren find a stack of my
tapes up in my attic in a century the effort to simply determine the
archive format would probably run in the thousands of dollars.

-James [a roll of 120 Tech Pan can hold nearly 7GB "unformatted"]