On 1/4/08 6:22 PM, Douglas A. Tutty wrote:

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> How well do tapes written with one drive read on another?

Good, provide you use serious designed tape drives.

 > Presuably, drives don't last for 30 years.

..

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> How robust are the drives?  How well do they age?

It's difficult to speak for other makings but Exabyte always made it's newer 
generation drives read compatible with older generations. Most drives are in 
production for say 5 years, so the first 10 years are more or less covered.

We are paid by a Dutch police department to keep 2 different generations of 
tape readable by unsupported Exabyte drives. We do so by carefully storing the 
last new drives we could buy and using a few other drives each month for 
backup operations and storing and not touching a few other good ones from 
different production series for spare parts.

We are nearing 20 years of reliable reading tapes without any problem. I don't 
foresee problems for the next 5 years.

+++chefren