>But i'm interested in the reliability of DLT tapes. How many damaged
>tapes have the members of this list seen in their live?

 

Dozens. DLTs are high density, but very sensitive to environmentals. Temperature, pressure, humidity all have a serious impact on DLT performance and lifetime -- most small shops don't maintain a controlled environment that supports longterm DLT usage.  Drop one or knock it off a desk and the data's probably gone. They also hold up very poorly to lots of tape positioning requests (in a non-collocated environment, DLTs don't work well at all).

 

In most "open systems" environments, I don't recommend using DLT cartridges for more than 4 months before replacing them.  If you look at the total lifecycle cost of using the DLTs, the 3590s start to look like a good idea very quickly.