Tape Cleaning & Analysis

LTO & 3592 tape cleaning, re-tensioning and analysis equipment

We can supply tape cleaning, re-tensioning and analysis equipment for your tape media. This ensures that your valuable data is written to tapes that are of good quality. Tapes do degrade through use, poor handling and environmental conditions, so isn’t it better to find out before you have a permanent write or read error? This way you can weed out the failing tapes and replace them before they cause you problems and possible data loss.

LTO & 3592 tape cleaning, re-tensioning and analysis services

We can supply tape cleaning, re-tensioning and analysis services at your site or at ours. This service ensures that your valuable data is written to tapes that are of good quality. Tapes do degrade through use and environmental conditions, so isn’t it better to find out before you have a permanent read or write error? This way you can weed out the failing tapes and replace them before they cause you problems and possible data loss.

LTO & 3592 tape analysis service - in detail

This service analyses the tape's CM (cartridge memory) which is an RF chip within the tape to test for problems recorded on the chip. This is a non-invasive analysis and cannot damage the tape or data stored on the tape as it just reads the RFID chip. This ensures that your valuable data is written to tapes that are of good quality. Tapes do degrade through use and environmental conditions, so isn’t it better to find out before you have a permanent read or write error? This way you can weed out the failing tapes and replace them before they cause you problems and possible data loss and will also indicate if a particular drive is failing if you have multiple drives. Ask us for a quote on this service for your LTO tapes as they come up for re-use!

VHS tape cleaning and retensioning services

If your VHS tapes have invaluable life memories and you are having trouble with them we can clean and retension them and as long as the VHS tape recorder/player heads are in good condition it will help restore the picture quality.

Life of an LTO Tape

Did you know that the LTO cartridge has many definitions for the life of the cartridge, all very difficult to compare with most tape useage. The best way to use an LTO tape is if you write to it once and store it in the correct environment (20 degrees centigrade +/- 2 degrees, 40-60% Relative Humidity and a dust free environment), it should last 30 years. Life of an LTO tape is measured by 1,000 passes. A pass is where a tape changes direction in a read or write process. This translates to between 100 and 260 uses and the tape is then recomended to be retired and replaced. You can get a longer life than this but read and write errors increase and eventually full data restore becomes questionable. All tapes must be aclimation to the environment they will be used in for 24 hours after receiving them! This will extend their life and reduce errors.