On Sat, May 10, 2003 at 10:58:27PM -0400, Mitch Collinsworth wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 10 May 2003, Jon LaBadie wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, May 11, 2003 at 12:16:27AM +0200, Vlad Popa wrote:
> > >
> > > 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.

So you haven't used DDS3 or DDS4.

What failure mode were you experiencing -
Bad read/write?  Tape breakage?

Myself, I've been using DDS3 tapes in a tapecycle of 18 or 24.
The 18 have been in use for over 2 years.  The last six added later.
I've yet to note a tape failure.

What about other users of these more recent DDS formats?
Are you experiencing tape failures?  Would you know?

-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                  jon AT jgcomp DOT com
 JG Computing
 4455 Province Line Road        (609) 252-0159
 Princeton, NJ  08540-4322      (609) 683-7220 (fax)