[Coco] So, does anyone know where to get disk drives?

[Mark J. Blair]

On Sep 2, 2013, at 15:47 , Steven Hirsch <snhirsch at gmail.com> wrote:
> As murderous as it is intended to be on magnetic media, I was quite surprised at how difficult it is to wipe a DLT 70 tape with the beast.  A few passes that suffice for the average video cassette have little to no effect on a DLT tape.  That's one of the main reasons I swear by its successor, LTO.  Since the LTO has a pre-written servo track, I've never tried to sacrifice one but expect it would be a bear (DLT drives can format from scratch).


That's interesting to me. I haven't used DLT or LTO yet, but all of the cartridge tape formats I've used in the past (QIC, DAT, etc.) have left me very unimpressed with their reliability. I'd choose old fashioned open-reel 9-track tape over any of the cartridges I've used, if I had a 9-track tape drive and a huge air-conditioned vault to keep the mountains of tapes in. If DLT and/or LTO are really good, then maybe I should invest in some new-fangled tape hardware for backups and archival.

-- 
Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net>
http://www.nf6x.net/