On Sun May 11 2003 14:12, Dan Riley wrote:
>Mitch Collinsworth <mitch AT ccmr.cornell DOT edu> writes:
>> 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.
>
>Ditto, but that was all a long time ago (back when the DDS1 drives
>were a step up in reliability from the Exabytes we had been
> using).
>
>> 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.
>
>Our experience so far is that AIT3 is better than AIT2, but still
> not in the same class as DLT4000 or 7000--but some of our
> problems with AIT3 have certainly been the usual arrows in the
> back early adopters tend to collect.  Sony has been very
> responsive addressing the issues we've encountered, so your
> experience may be better.
>
>-dan

FWIW guys, I have a rack of DDS2 tapes, 28 in the pool, and in 2 
years of an amanda run every night, I've lost one tape.  So those 
have about 30 passes each on them now.  I'm  also using them in a 
Seagate/Compaq 4 tape changer, so they are being handled gently.  
Since they are the ultimate cheap tapes at about 2 bucks new on 
ebay, I cannot complain.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
AMD K6-III@500mhz 320M
Athlon1600XP@1400mhz  512M
99.26% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly
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Copyright 2003 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.