On Mon, 26 Aug 1996 11:50:42 -0400 Tim Dobrowolsky said:
>  I'm hearing alot of bad rap about 8mm's in
>general from oper-l and
>this list as well.  I'm feeling uneasy.  Any advice?  Thanks.

We have had lots of problems with 8mm too, tho we had 8500C drives.
I think the 8505 drives may be more reliable.  With 8mm (and 4mm) it is
important to clean the tape heads frequently.  We have found that waiting
for the drive to tell us that it needs cleaning is not good enough.
We clean our drives after every 25 hours of head use.  This seems to help
a lot.  If you do run into errors, try cleaning the heads multiple times
(3-4 times).  There are also new versions of the cleaning tape that do a
better job (i.e., they are more abrasive).  Naturally, this will increase
head wear, so it is a double-edged sword.  We seem to have more problems
using ADSM with 8mm tapes when backing up lots of small files, and fewer
problems when archiving large files.  Part of the problem may stem from
ADSM not being able to update its database quickly enough to keep the 8mm
drive in streaming mode, when dealing with smaller files.

We have just acquired a new DLT robot and are extremely happy with it.  We
have not had a single I/O error with it.

..Paul

Paul Zarnowski                     Phone:   607/255-4757
Cornell Information Technologies   Fax:     607/255-6523
Cornell University                 US Mail: 315 CCC, Ithaca, NY 14853-2601