Topic: Travan tape destroyed

[Atlantis]

In a SME 5.6 server we have a Seagate Travan 10/20 tape drive. The server is still in a kind of test state as it is still hooked up using a dynamic ip service. The same tape has always been left in the drive.

Now the tape has been destroyed after working for 2 or 3 months without a problem: The magnetic tape has been torn inside the tape's case. At the moment we don't care about the data on the tape but we wonder what is more likely: The drive being faulty or a bad tape. After all we think that the lifetime of a (Imation) Travan tape should be longer (it was new before).

Can anyone give a clue what to do? We can't risk losing more tapes anyway as we are students and running the server for non-commercial purposes.

Thanks.

Martin

BTW: Does anyone know for how long such a tape can be used without risking data loss under normal conditions?

[neurotecimbecile]

hi there,,
   first of all its an accident that should be avoided,,,well actually seagate is good but if the problem is about the torn off of the tape,,maybe you can change your tape drive,,,actually i have the same problem before but i switch a tapedrive for a TANDBERG DATA tape drive,,its the best in the market and until now i haven't encountered any torn off tapes,,,
  --usually the longevity of the tape drive depends on the data that is back up regularly by the server,,so if your system doesnt have big databases ,,,the capacity ,,,lets say a 40 mb tape ,,usually you can use it for about a year,,,it depends on what kind and type of system are you backing up...

goodluck