8mm tapes

[Dick Dunn]

wjones at nwnexus.WA.COM (Warren Jones) writes:
> joubert at afc-tci.UUCP (Joubert Berger) writes:
> >I have a question about 8mm tapes.  Are there reasons not to use the 
> >8mm video tapes (i.e Sony 8mm Video which cost $9.00 vs Sony 8mm Data
> >Cartrige which cost $18.00)?
> |[answer relayed from IBM]
> | According to a local tape manufacturer, the main difference between
> | the two tape grades is that the data grade is more reliable than the
> | video grade...[details of alleged manufacturing differences]
> On the other hand, my manager believes that data grade tapes and
> video tapes come off the same assembly line, and differ only in
> the label and the price...

According to a source within Exabyte, there's some truth in both sides of
the view.  The data-grade tapes come from the same manufacturing line (tho
there might be some differences in selection for testing) but they're
required to be more reliable.  The most likely effect of using regular
video tapes is that you'll get more errors, but they'll be recovered, so
you'll get less data on a tape and slightly slower performance.  However,
the difference is more in the ten percent ballpark - it's not commensurate
with the 50% difference in price.  Naturally, you also increase your risk
of unrecoverable error (tanstaafl), but that's small.

It's reasonable to use the video tapes for standard day-to-day and the
data-grade tapes for Really Important Stuff.
-- 
Dick Dunn     rcd at ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd       Boulder, CO   (303)449-2870
   ...Lately it occurs to me what a long, strange trip it's been.