>
> Your comments are causing me to stress out a little. Could you
> describe what your problems with 8-mm are? Also what brand of 8-mm
> drives and tapes are/were you using?
>

   I'm not the original sender of this message but wanted to make sure it's
known that all 8mm drives are made by the same manufacturer, Exabyte.
No matter which name is on the box the drive itself is made by Exabyte.
Make sure you're using quality data grade 8mm tapes (e.g. Exabyte, Sony
or Maxell) for backups/archives.  DO NOT use cheap video 8mm tapes, yes
they will work but you can gunk up your drives and lose data.  Also
make sure you follow a rigorous cleaning regime.  Cleaning is recommended
to be done following 30 hours of drive operation (read or write).  It's
hard to track drive usage but try to be religious about your cleaning.
Also try to use the Sony or Exabyte cleaning tapes, if you lift the cover
of the cleaner tape it looks like white cloth.  Some of the cheaper cleaning
tapes look like regular data tape and reportedly don't work as well.

   I followed these rules in my backups and did not have any problems with
my 8mm drives or recovering data from tape when needed.

Rich Campbell
System Software Analyst
Texas Instruments