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Still More On Using Audio DAT For Computer Backup

Still more on using audio DAT for computer backup from reader David H:

“I work every day with 4mm, 8mm, DLT, 3490 and 3590 data drives and media. If a user wants to switch to “computer DAT” (i.e., SCSI 4mm) they should be aware of the following:

  1. The drive is less tolerant of media errors.

  2. Media plays an important role. Find the best you can and only use data grade, otherwise, your drive head life will be considerably shortened. These devices use helical scan technology and as the tape is brought into the transport mechanism, pinch rollers actually touch the data side of the tape (1/2 inch or linear technology does not have this problem). Particles are easily dislodged and can build up and damage the drive head.

  3. Clean the drive heads every 20-30 passes. (Cleaning tapes are usually good for 25 passes and are A LOT cheaper than a new head.)

  4. All DDS drives have sufficient error correction built-in. The software simply needs to be able to determine how to correctly handle errors.

  5. Do not use the same tape over and over – you are inviting dropped data.

  6. Clean the heads right after using a new tape for the first time (older tapes have probably shed all of the “loose” particles).

A good drive might be a DDS2 with a 120m tape – about 4GB uncompressed. They aren’t cheap, but if I were to be backing up audio files, I would certainly remain in the computer’s digital domain and back it up as data – not audio streams.”

Thanks very much for this information David!

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