dat drive life expectancy

[Arnold Warwick]

What is the life expectancy of a dat drive. Our's are ~ 4 years old, backing up ~ 300 days a year, running 5 hours a night. Thanks.

P.S. This thread has been moved from Storage>General to Tape Libraries and Drives. -HP Forum Moderator

[Curt Thompson]

Hello Arnold,

Wow! That's some record! Did you mean that you are using the same DDS tape drive for the full four years?

Although you are getting good reliability from your current tape drive, you are probably missing out on backup speed & quantity by not using current DDS tape drives, like DDS2, 3 or 4. All these tape drives are improved versions of DDS1 tape drives which will reduce your backup time, store more data, or both.

To answer your original question, I have a few tape drives that have lasted a long time too. But usually, they seem to poop-out before the time you posted.

Good Luck,
Curt

[Michael Tully]

Hi Arnold,

Generally you will find that around
one year would be the life expected
out of a DDS tape drive. I am amazed
that your have lasted so long. That
is why the maintenance costs for DDS
tapes drives are so expensive.

Curt is right in that the newer drives
give far more performance than the
older ones.

Cheers
Michael

[Robert Bean]

I have seen our drives last for upwards of 5 years! It really depends on how well you take care of the drive. For information in regards on how to ensure a long life for your drive, please visit the following URL:

http://www.hp.com/cposupport/information_storage/support_doc/lpg51254.html

[Shahul]

Hi

It is fully depend on how U are using and what type of dats U are using. If U are using bad dats datdrive will go bad vey easily. If U are throwing ur dat after 100 insertion ur drive will last for so long time.

Shahul

[paul courry]

It depends..............

Many of the drives you get from HP are rebuilt so a drive may last 5 minutes or may last 5 years. A true case of YMMV.