On Sat, 10 May 2003, Jon LaBadie wrote:

> On Sun, May 11, 2003 at 12:16:27AM +0200, Vlad Popa wrote:
> > Hi List !
> >
> > I am considering of making backups using amnda  and therefore  I was
> > looking for a good, affordable tape drive to use.  I was thinking of
> > Dat tapes (DDS 3 or better), but I've heared you could use the tapes
> > just 10 times and then you have to exchange them because you will loose
> > your data if you don't do that.
>
> Who told you that, a salesperson for another tape format?

Maybe not 10, but when I used DDS2 I eventually adopted a policy of
throwing them away after 20 uses, if they even made it that far.
DDS1 was even worse.  I also adopted a policy of not buying any more
DDS drives, so despite the newer DDS models supposedly doing much
better, I've never witnessed it.

The best tape longevity I've personally experienced was with DLT4000,
which was the only DLT model I've personally used.  My current AIT2's
can't compete with the DLT.  Will soon be making the long-awaited
switch to AIT3.  Hopefully that will do better than AIT2.

-Mitch