[QuadList] Deck degaussing--What's the current practice amongQuadList users?

[Don Norwood]

Hi Ted:

I degauss everything in the tape path on a fairly regular schedule.  Why would you want to take a chance otherwise?  When you discover that you need to do it, it's too late.  Obviously, a problem could arise between scheduled degausing times, but that's not been a problem for me recently.   It's also my standard practice to degauss a new headwheel before mounting it on the machine.

Specifically regarding the headwheel, it is possible for a single head tip to become magnetized.  When that happens, you probably won't notice it on the first pass, but subsequent passes of the same tape will become very obvious with a loss of RF on the magnetized channel.  I haven't seen that problem in a long time, but I remember it well from the first time I saw it in the early 70's and didn't realize what was wrong! 

Don Norwood
Digitrak Communications, Inc.
www.digitrakcom.com  
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Ted Langdell 

  Chris, 


  Sounds like you're saying that its better to invest the relatively short amount of time to degauss the tape path often rather than to have un-repairable damage to archive or customer tape's content that can't be replaced or restored.


  What is the current practice among our QuadList users?


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