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safe to erase QIC tapes with electomagnetic erasor?

 
Riff Fox
Occasional Contributor

safe to erase QIC tapes with electomagnetic erasor?

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.
1 REPLY 1
Rothery Harris
Trusted Contributor

Re: safe to erase QIC tapes with electomagnetic erasor?

There are 2 problems in bulk erasure of these tapes.
1.)You need a bulk erase machine which has a strong enough magmetic field to do the job.
2.)There may be pre-recorded servo information on the tape which if erased will render the tape unusable. Travan tape definitely have servo code pre-recorded.