Need some email/colo service -- recommedations?

[rlk at alum.mit.edu (Robert L Krawitz)]

   From: "Mark J. Dulcey" <mark at buttery.org>
   Date: Tue, 02 Mar 2004 10:33:55 -0500

   Chris Devers wrote:

   > Tapes are fragile too, but if cared for reasonably well it seems like they
   > can work for decades. Will that be true for hard drives & CDs?

   (How bleak the picture is depends in part on what part of the
   market you're looking at. 10 year old low-end tape formats are
   completely hopeless; they were QIC tape and data cassette, both of
   which are completely defunct now. As for the big enterprise stuff,
   you were looking at either 8mm or DDS-1; you might be able to get
   drives that can read those for a couple more years. But the
   argument still applies; it just pushes the drop-dead time out a
   bit. Besides, for a business of the scale we're discussing here,
   you're probably not going to be looking at tape systems in the
   $4,000 class.)

8 mm and 4 mm tapes are far from robust, even if cared for well.  All
helical scan formats have complicated tape paths and high speed moving
parts that can eat tapes for lunch.  The last time I tried 4 mm tape,
I had two drives in a row go kerplunk on me, making dangerous-sounding
clunk noises.