Backup devices - and software?

[Timothy A. Seufert]

At 5:35 PM -0700 6/3/02, bronto wrote:
>This all rings sooo true!  I gave up on tape for these very reasons about 6
>years ago but had hoped/assumed that the technology had straightened itself
>out by now.  I guess not.  Even if the technology in *in theory* works well,
>the media itself is so inherently fragile I was always fearful that just
>transporting them off site in a hot car would ruin them.

That was one of the impressive things about Ecrix, actually: they 
advertise that they can take a VXA-1 tape, dump it in boiling water 
for a minute, and (after it's been allowed to dry completely) still 
read data off it.  Other tests involved dunking the tape in coffee, 
cleaning it, and reading it, and freezing a tape in a block of ice.

-- 
Tim Seufert