FOR WHAT IT IS WORTH (re magnetic tapes over CDs): My brother, a former computer technician at ADP, had the following rebuttal to the Computerworld article on the alleged reliability of magnetic tapes: "U know, thinking more on this, the guy that wrote that article must have NEVER used computer tapes. I’ve used them EXTENSIVELY literally thousands of times with ADP moving data around while getting ready for classes I used to teach, and remotely restoring client’s dead systems from tapes while dialed in to their systems. In a nutshell, tape drives just suck and DO NOT WORK WELL AT ALL! They have little or no compatibility from brand to brand, and FAIL CONSTANTLY with a myriad of confusing proprietary errors, all of which translate after many hours of techie text explanations into, “You’re ***ed, try another tape.” I find it very hard to believe the tape medium itself lasts longer, because in my experience with them they degrade from heat, humidity, exposure to magnetic fields, and just plain AGE. The iron or chromium oxide or other chemical emulsion eventually just flakes off the tape and then you're permanently lost! Tapes and tape drives just fall apart and screw up constantly, given the fact there are a lot of moving parts and friction with tapes you don’t have with CDs and LASERS. Even if it were true that tapes last longer, their incredible quirkiness and unrelieability are just UNBEARABLE, and it’s a miracle when one ever works! Just about every business trip in my pre-sales days, I was sent to re-start some client from scratch BECAUSE THEIR BACKUP TAPES DIDN'T WORK. I don’t think anyone with an IQ over 65 has actually used them very much since about the early 90s anyway. Tapes have been replaced as backup media by RAID technology years ago, which is basically mirroring data in real time to a second or third drive. Hard to believe this message/article was written and sent this year, and not around 1992 perhaps? If you're worried about CDs, then go with memory sticks or data cards until something better becomes available, and leave the tape drives in the SMITHSONIAN!" --my outspoken computer-genius brother (who shall for obvious reasons remain anonymous) Please don't shoot the messenger, this is for the common good; i.e., one might do well to think twice or even thrice before investing in obsolete technology. Hope you found this as informative and entertaining as I did. ============================================================= KarenHob@aol.com wrote: (NOTE: The article below warns that CD storage is not permanent. It does not address whether DVD storage is any better.) Storage expert warns of short life span for burned CDs And don't count on hard disk drives for long-term storage, either News Story by John Blau JANUARY 10, 2006 (COMPUTERWORLD) - Although opinions vary on how to preserve data on digital storage media, such as optical CDs and DVDs, Kurt Gerecke, a physicist and storage expert at IBM Deutschland GmbH, takes this view: If you want to avoid having to burn new CDs every few years, use magnetic tapes to store all your pictures, videos and songs for a lifetime. "Unlike pressed original CDs, burned CDs have a relatively short life span of between two to five years, depending on the quality of the CD," Gerecke said in an interview this week. "There are a few things you can do to extend the life of a burned CD, like keeping the disc in a cool, dark space, but not a whole lot more." The problem is material degradation. Optical discs commonly used for burning, such as CD-R and CD-RW, have a recording surface consisting of a layer of dye that can be modified by heat to store data. The degradation process can result in the data "shifting" on the surface and thus becoming unreadable to the laser beam. "Many of the cheap burnable CDs available at discount stores have a life span of around two years," Gerecke said. "Some of the better-quality discs offer a longer life span, of a maximum of five years." Distinguishing high-quality burnable CDs from low-quality discs is difficult, he said, because few vendors use life span as a selling point. Hard-drive disks also have their limitations, according to Gerecke. The problem with hard drives, he said, is not so much the disk itself as it is the disk bearing, which has a positioning function similar to a ball bearing. "If the hard drive uses an inexpensive disk bearing, that bearing will wear out faster than a more expensive one," he said. His recommendation: a hard-drive disk with 7,200 revolutions per minute. To overcome the preservation limitations of burnable CDs, Gerecke suggests using magnetic tapes, which, he claims, can have a life span of 30 to 100 years, depending on their quality. "Even if magnetic tapes are also subject to degradation, they're still the superior storage media," he said. ==== GERMAN-BOHEMIAN Mailing List ==== Would you like to see messages that were posted before you joined the list? Visit http://www.rootsweb.com/~gbhs/mailinglist.html and request an archive. --------------------------------- Yahoo! Photos – Showcase holiday pictures in hardcover Photo Books. You design it and we’ll bind it!