jms@infmx.UUCP (John Stephens) (09/19/89)
We are in the process of phasing a couple of Plexus boxes out of circulation and now have a fairly large number of tapes which have been used for incremental backups in the past and are available for re-use. My question: is this a good idea ? I know that ATT used a count of 5000 when formatting cartridge tapes under the sysadm package. Is this a reasonable number ? It seems high. What sort of experience have people had with cleaning and re-using 9 tracks ? Do you recommend it ? Do you have a preferred vendor of cleaning services ? Thanks for any input. I will post a summary if I get an feedback. jms -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Jack Stephens ..!{uunet|pyramid}!infmx!jms --or-- ..!jack!wzlr!jms | | Systems Programmer "Into the valley of Death rode the 600... | | Informix Software which allowed them to use the carpool lane." |
wtr@ceres.physics.uiowa.edu (09/20/89)
In article <2383@infmx.UUCP>, jms@infmx.UUCP (John Stephens) writes: > We are in the process of phasing a couple of Plexus boxes out of > circulation and now have a fairly large number of tapes which have > been used for incremental backups in the past and are available > for re-use. My question: is this a good idea ? > > What sort of experience have people had with cleaning and re-using 9 > track tapes We have re-used tapes from a number of sources for years here at the Physics Dept. At Univ. of Iowa successfully. The ability to clean and test tapes makes this possible for us. When we receive tapes that are to be re-used, we clean and test each tape and discard any problem tapes. Typically 80% - 90% of the tapes appear to be suitable for use (any that test bad are simply discarded). We also tend to sort the 'good' tapes into several groups according to the number of bad spots on the tape and distribute them accordingly. Also keep in mind that GCR tape drives (i.e. 6250 bpi) are a little less sensetive to bad spots on the tape than PE (i.e. 1600 bpi) drives are. Bill Robison SYSWTR@IOWASP.PHYSICS.UIOWA.EDU