Exabyte media

[Frank J. Nagy:VAX Guru,Wizard&Loose Cannon]

We use *lots* of 8mm media here at Fermilab (>30,000 cassettes) in a
wide mix of systems - mostly VAXes running VMS but also SGIs.  We also
interchange media between systems (raw data written on a VAX or a VME-based
small kernel data acquisition system, 1st processing pass (In:raw,
Output:Processed) on SGI or VAXes,other passes on VAXes, SGIs and an
Amdahl.  Besides data tapes for high energy physics experiments, we
use 8mm tape for backup on a large number of systems with few media-related
problems.

We have done a bit of limited media testing and have found that the
best media right now is the Fuji P6-120 Metal Powder tape.  This
is closely followed by the Sonly P6-120 MP (Video8) Metal Particle
tape.  These media are very inexpensive and seem to work better than
the 3x$ "data certified" cartridges.  In my experience, I have had
more problems with "certified" cartridges from the 8mm drive vendors
than I've ever had with the Sony or Fuji tape.

We have also had big problems with the Sony Hi8 Metal-P tapes causing
(apparently) damage to tape drives.  We do not permit these tapes to
be used any long and have returned the unused tapes to Sony for
replacement.  Note that this might just be a bad tape lot, since
initial testing showed no problems and we continue to have *no* problems
with the Sony Video8 tapes.

= Dr. Frank J. Nagy   "VAX Guru & Wizard"
= Fermilab Computing Division/Distributed Computing Dept/Special Projects Grp
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