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LTO has been around for more than twenty years, true, but not quite thirty, so we can't test the claim of thirty years of shelf life, but DLT, which are surpris
by johnklos 5y ago
LTO has been around for more than twenty years, true, but not quite thirty, so we can't test the claim of thirty years of shelf life, but DLT, which are surprisingly similar, came out in 1984, and lots of thirty year old and older DLT media has been shown to be readable.
The tape drives themselves are much more of an issue than the tapes. It's a shame, because it necessitates moving data on older tapes to newer generation tapes after a few generations (which reminds me I have to do that with some LTO-3 tapes).
- jgrahamc 5y agoSpeaking of tape lifetimes, my old cassette CrO2 tapes seem to have survived my parents' house: https://blog.jgc.org/2009/08/in-which-i-switch-on-30-year-old.html https://blog.jgc.org/2009/08/in-which-i-switch-on-30-year-ol...
- wheybags 5y agoMy one experience of digital magnetic tape is mini-dv cassettes. I recently ripped a bunch of old home videos from some cassettes from the 2000s, and quite a few were fairly damaged. Compared to the vhses from the same time and even older, they were way worse.
- rodgerd 5y ago> The tape drives themselves are much more of an issue than the tapes This is absolutely the pain point. Having to either keep multiple generations of drive around, and hope that they don't die in storage; or continually migrate your old tape to new tape is a huge pain in the arse.