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Quick version: I need advise on a shelf for storing a bunch of 10.5" reel to reel backup tapes. Long version: I recently had to recall a bunch of tapes from an offsite storage we were no longer doing business with. I was asked to house them locally which generally I can do no problem. I expected some old LTOs or maybe even the older 3590 tapes. What I got was nearly three hundred 10.5 inch reels (3M Black Watch No. 703 Extra Length 6250 CPI all dated in the early 90s). I have no place for these things and they don't quite fit in a standard filing cabinet. I have left them in the boxes they were shipped in for six months but I need to get them off the floor of the data canter and on a shelf somewhere. These things don't shelf so easy and no one seems to sell those old cabinets for these things. Any ideas? I get they may not even be readable they are so old, but I need to at least make some effort on this. I did call a data conversion place to price having these put on a different format. I thought they accidentally added too many zeros. I can't imagine the look on managements face when I try to sell that expense.
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# ? Sep 20, 2017 20:11 |
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# ? Mar 28, 2024 20:51 |
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Does anyone even have the equipment to read these things back? Back of the hand math says you have 60gb of data there tops, I'd have an intern/grunt/whatever dump them to disk images and upload it to S3, file share, or something. Tapes degrade over time and odds are you probably are going to have lots of read errors on those things. If they actually have some kind of value or utility then getting it on to a more stable medium should be a priority otherwise everyone is just lying to themselves.
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# ? Sep 20, 2017 20:29 |
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They do have them, but now they want your first born to use it. I remember these have little square tabs on the outer ring for hanging them on pegs.... Edit: 100% agree on the validity of the medium. I can't imagine they read properly.
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# ? Sep 20, 2017 20:53 |
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Yeah, hanging rack was going to be my next suggestion if you're stuck with them. Were these things stored in a climate controlled space for their entire life? The environmental spec for these things is fairly tight on humidity/temp control and they degrade fast outside of it. Maybe try running a test read against a sampling of them and see what the error rate is. If you can prove they are garbage then you might be able to get away with wiping and disposing of them.
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# ? Sep 20, 2017 20:56 |
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Unspool all the tape off of the reels into someone's cube and then take a pic of the giant tape blob and post it here thirding there is no usable data on those tapes at this point
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# ? Sep 20, 2017 21:32 |
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Cube wall art is the only reason reel to reel data tapes should still exist.
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# ? Sep 20, 2017 21:51 |
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Aunt Beth posted:Cube wall art is the only reason reel to reel data tapes should still exist. someone hasn't visited the Living Computer Museum
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# ? Sep 21, 2017 07:01 |
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I am curious as the why you would care about data that old that hasn't already been migrated to a more modern medium. If it were of any use, surely it would be sitting on a tiny folder on a network somewhere. It's not the moon-landing or a lost Doctor Who, is it?
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# ? Sep 24, 2017 13:36 |
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spog posted:I am curious as the why you would care about data that old that hasn't already been migrated to a more modern medium. If it were of any use, surely it would be sitting on a tiny folder on a network somewhere. rules and regulations
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# ? Sep 26, 2017 21:37 |
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atomicthumbs posted:rules and regulations I thought that the legal requirements in the USA was only 6 years
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# ? Sep 26, 2017 22:37 |
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# ? Mar 28, 2024 20:51 |
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Rules is whatever the person cutting your check say they are.
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# ? Sep 26, 2017 23:32 |