On Wed, 25 Oct 2000, Chris Karakas wrote:
>
>I think he means the density on the magnetic medium, as measured in bits
>per inch. I don't think you can change this (at least not set a higher
>density for a medium constructed with a lower one), because it has to do
>with the density of the magnetic particles on the tape, i.e. the
>physical quality and specs.
That's what I was referring to, as well as compression on/off. Some
drives let you adjust the BPI to fit the media. I'm thinking more of
old 9-track tapes, the numbers which float to the top are 800, 1600, and
6250 bpi, and you told the drive what density to use. I had an old
DAT tape drive about 10 years ago which had density controls as well.
This was before the DDS-n standards came into common usage.
You can try to write any density your drive is capable of, and if the
media doesn't have case notches, your drive will do it, but you may
experience higher error rates if the media isn't up to the task.
On my drives, once a tape is written with compressesion/density
settings, that tape will forever retain those values until forcibly
erased, usually with an 'mt weof' or something similar.
--
Joi Ellis
[EMAIL PROTECTED], http://www.visi.com/~gyles19/
