The only tape media I have worked with that had that sort of error rate was 8mm DAT. That was very unreliable. In 20+ years of 34xx/3590 experience I've never seen that sort of error rate.
I don't think even the cassette tape used with the TRS-80 was as bad as the DAT tape. On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 8:18 AM, Dave Reinken <da...@reinken.us> wrote: > > Anybody read the Mainframe Executive article on the death of tape as a > > backup media? The guy writing it used to work for STK and Sun, and now > > works for disk-based backup vendors. He says the following: > > > > - 15% of all backups fail (my experience < 1%) > > - 10-50% of all restores from tape fail (my experience <1%) > > - 40-50% failure when restoring data from tape > 5 years (my experience > > again is <1%) > > > > So what are you guys seeing out there? Do we really have mainframe tape > > failure rates in the double-digits percentwise? If we do, then the guy > is > > right and tape is dead, but I just don't buy those figures. What say > you? > > Even on 3420's, of which I have seen a few snapped tapes, error rates > were much lower than these ones. I would be curious as to where he came > up with these numbers. Given the thousands of 3420's I used, the error > rate on those was below 1%, and on 3480, 3490, 3490E and 3590 tapes the > rates have been far below 1%. > > On various tape systems I've used to back up PC workstations and network > servers, on the other hand, I have definitely seen high error rates, > although probably much closer to 15-20% at the highest than the up to > 50% he reports. > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO > Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html > -- Mark Pace Mainline Information Systems 1700 Summit Lake Drive Tallahassee, FL. 32317 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
