safe to erase QIC tapes with electomagnetic erasor?

[Riff Fox]

I have a bunch of used QIC-3010 backup tapes I plan to try to sell, as I no longer use tape for backup - problem is, they still contain backup data and my tape drive no longer works, so I cannot reformat them.

I have considered erasing the tapes with an electromagnetic tape erasor commonly used to bulk erase audio and video tapes. Is this proceedure safe to use on these data tapes? I don't wish to render them incapable of being reformatted.

[Rothery Harris]

Riff,

There are two problems here. 1)the tapes may have embedded servo code - I am not sure but Travan tapes do! 2)Your eraser may well not be strong enought to degauss the tape. An audio tape bulk eraser is not strong enough.

Rothery

[CA756694]

The answer from one of the media engineers here at HP is that you can bulk erase 3010 tapes, however, all data will be lost and the cartridge will have to be re-formatted in order for it to be usable for backup. Formatting in a drive can take up to a few hours to complete.


cheers

John