[HECnet] Tape drive explosion

[Mark Wickens]

On 24/01/2013 06:35, Ian McLaughlin wrote:

On 2013-01-23, at 9:28 PM, Cory Smelosky <b4 at gewt.net> wrote:

Eeeeeep!   Was it an important tape?

AQ-JP22D-BE VMS V5.2 BIN TK50 1/2

I think I have another copy somewhere.   I'm suspecting that the TK50 drive in this external SCSI chassis might be bad...

Ian

Ian,
This is usually down to the tape rather than the drive. 

It is recommended that you 'bake' old tapes before reading them - over time they become 'sticky'. IIRC a couple of hours at around 50 degC.
I have a load of tapes that I need to read off but I've currently got no way of baking. I suspect that a standard oven, even on it's lowest setting, will be too hot - you need something like an incubating oven. I know someone who used to do this on a regular occasion and had very few failures using this method.

Regards, Mark.