TAPE DRIVES

      Don't!

That's really all that needs to be said about tape drives - they are the buggy whips in the age of the automobile. But since most folks feel cheated with a one word article, I WILL write more.

Tape drives came in many formats and sizes and were used for backing up information. Most of them used casette type audio sized tapes and the drives could be installed either within the case or separately in its own little housing. A good many external tape units had their own specially designed expansion cards - usually some variation of a SCSI card that would only work with their tape unit. Each tape drive had its own special software that had to be installed before the drive was useful.

The disadvantages of audio tapes for use with computers are well known. They have a relatively short shelf life (shortened even more with heat), they tend to stretch, they get brittle with age and, because a tape is a serial storage device, it takes a relatively long time to find a specific piece of data on a tape. Read the articles about CD-R/RW and DVD drives and you'll quickly see why tape drives are a thing of the past.

See also Tape Units

If you got here from somewhere other than the table of contents, use the Back Button at the upper left hand side of your screen to go back. It looks like this:

Click here to return to table of contents.