[Coco] Sigh of relief, refresh your floppies!

[Gene Heskett]

On Saturday 27 March 2010, Steven Hirsch wrote:
>On Sat, 27 Mar 2010, Gene Heskett wrote:
>>>>> Avoid rotary head data drives (DAT and 8mm) like the plague.  I've
>>>>> had enormous problems with these over the years and I don't think I'm
>>>>> alone.
>>>>
>>>> Nope, you have lots of company in that little red wagon bound for
>>>> he!!.
>>>
>>> s/hell/bitbucket/    ?
>>>
>>> It's reassuring to know I'm not the only one :-)  Interesting how a
>>> technology that worked so well for video acquired such a black-eye in
>>> the computer domain.  I'll guess that things were scaled down, dumbed
>>> down and cheapened to the point of unreliability, then "Muntzed" back
>>> until they just barely worked (a time-tested engineering process).
>>
>> A history buff I see. ;-)
>
>I first heard about "Muntz-ing" from an old-time radio & tv repair guy I
>worked for during my high school years.  An important part of electronics
>folk-lore!
>
>> Yeah I fought with a dds2 changer for a couple of years, wearing out 4
>> of them before I got schmardt.  Now I use vtapes on a terrabyte hard
>> drive, very dependable in comparison to the dds2 tapes.  My data outgrew
>> them anyway.
>
>At the risk of appearing naive... vtape?  What's dat?
>
>Steve
>
Actually, individual directories on a hard drive partition in this case.  
That makes each backup file into random access, so you don't have to read 
the whole tape to find file #21 on it.  V is for virtual in this case.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
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