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Pretty sure it's not immune to bit rot.

Have any data to back your claim?



Tape drives will, when writing, re-read the data as it is written to make sure no errors are written and will transparently correct any errors. In addition, quite a bit of error correcting code is written, making it possible to correct simple errors.

So perhaps not 100% immune, but partial immunity to bit-rot is a pretty important part of the LTO spec.


Immune, no. Far less prone to bit rot? yeah. My source is running backups for a significant fraction of a large univiersity for ~20 years. We had a routine cadence of tape errors, which were much less frequent than our routine cadence of disk replacement.

I suppose that's anecdote. :) But it's what I've got.


> Have any data to back your claim?

Search for "year" in the specification of HPE's Ultrium LTO media:

* https://www.hpe.com/psnow/doc/c04154430

Or IBM's white paper:

* https://www.ibm.com/downloads/cas/Z3RYV0BR


So 30 years for HPE when stored in appropriate himidity/temperature range.




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