| gabriel rosenkoetter on Wed, 19 Feb 2003 09:21:05 -0500 |
|
On Wed, Feb 19, 2003 at 07:03:24AM -0500, Chris Hedemark wrote:
> DLT III has a lower capacity than DLT IV, but nobody wants them so the
> drives are cheap on eBay and the media is also cheaper.
I agree, but...
> The media isn't as cheap as DVD-RW but (1)you don't need to erase DLT
> before using it and (2)the media is a lot more rugged than anything
> optical (one scratch and you're done).
With any CD-format media, that's only sort of true. Very
fine-grained (or just not very abrasive; I've found that old IBM
punch cards work well enough in a pinch) sandpaper (maybe 400-or-so
grit) can fix that if you're careful, and the cheapo Disk Doctor
cleaners sold in any Electronics Boutique (or similar) video game
store really do work wonders.
But if you've got a scratch through the *top* (that is, the side
which would have a label) rather than the bottom (that is, the face)
of the media, you're probably screwed. (Both machined {CD,DVD}-ROMs
and recordable media keep the important bits far closer to the top
than the bottom, precisely so that the plastic on the bottom can be
resurfaced later.) A teacher of mine in highschool found this out
the hard way by etching his initials into some of his CDs. Whoops.
--
gabriel rosenkoetter
gr@eclipsed.net
Attachment:
pgpVRMQN2kq9H.pgp
|
|