Reliability Exabyte tapes

[s.desmarais]

>In article <3235 at canisius.UUCP> pavlov at canisius.UUCP (Greg Pavlov) writes:
>>In article <1781 at svin02.info.win.tue.nl>, hansb at svin02.info.win.tue.nl (Hans Bouw) writes:
>>> 
>>> Does anyone know if the Sony p5-90MP video-8 tapes
>>> are reliable, can I restore files from those tapes
>>> after 2 years or should I use tapes from Maxell or
>>> Exabyte.
>>
>>  ...
>>  The consensus was that the most
>>  reliable tapes were Exabyte's and SONY P6-120MPs.  Re the latter, there was
>>  a consensus that 1 out of apx. every 40-50 cartridges or so were found to
>>  be defective.  Our relatively short-term experience (apx. 7 months) has con-
>>  firmed this.

Speaking of reliability, I'd like to know what is the reliability and the
durability of the exabyte media.  What will happen in 15 years when I want
to restore files from exabytes? (Recently, we restored a 14 years old file
from a 9-track tape.)

We are rusing tapes for the incremental daily backups.  Is there a limit
to the number of times we can reuse exabyte tapes?

What are the environmental constraint to respect as to the storage
of exabyte tapes?

Also, do you think that the "exabyte" peripheral will be around for a
long time, or will we have to recopy all our archives to a new medium
3 years from now?

Is there any comparative study that was done on the reliability of the
different media available (the ol' 9-track, exabytes, streamers,
worm disks/laser disks, etc).  If so, could you point me to one?

That's about all my questions for now.  Maybe more latter.
-- 
Stephane M. Desmarais               sdesmara at sobeco.com
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