On 4/3/07, Ralf Müller
Am 03.04.2007 um 11:10 schrieb Carlos E. R.:
In theory a HD electronics can break down. In the same circumstances with removable media, the media itself can survive, you just replace the drive and recover the data. There are more things that can break down in a drive. In practice... :-?
If it is the only backup left and you really want to recover data from it you can replace the drive electronics too. But yes - a tape media _is_ more robust then a hard disk. There is much less fragile mechanics in it, there is no electronics in it ...
I'm a big fan of tape for multi-year backups, but you need to be careful with a generic statement that tape is more robust than disk. IIRC, most HDs today are rated for 30 G's of acceleration. That is the equivalent of the impact you get if you drop it from several feet onto a concrete floor. (ie. from waist height) There are 2 categories of tape, those with a manufacturer's alignment track and those without. Those with should also survive a multi-foot drop onto concrete. Those without will likely not survive. The reason is that the actual tape itself will move slightly after such a drop. Without an alignment track the drive will likely be unable to read the data from the proper location. With an alignment track and the associated extra drive head and drive positioning motors etc. (ie. $$) the drive should simply move the read/write heads to adjust for the actual position of the tape. FYI: Media that has an alignment track laid down by the manufacturer will be destroyed by using a tape degausser, so a quick test to see if your drive uses an alignment track is to take a tape media you plan to throw-out and run a $30 tape degauser across it. If the tape fails to work at all, then you had an alignment track. FYI2: I don't know if most tape drives today have alignment capability or not. I do know that DDR4 type drives of 10 years ago did not. And the LTO-1 drives I use do. Greg -- Greg Freemyer The Norcross Group Forensics for the 21st Century -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org