ARKIVAL TECHNOLOGY has developed a proprietary tape quality monitoring software that operates in the background of daily data processing activities. The recording media performance can be stored into a media-specific database and used to forecast Tape and Disc failures. An essential system tool that is technically proficient, upgradeable and capable of monitoring multiple storage devices and types. Media Life Expectancy can be predicted and planned for as data is normally being accessed and processed.

Applications

Catastrophic Media Failures still occur in spite of the high technology employed in today’s tape and disc drives and the notable gains made in media longevity. The complexity and sophistication of these products has resulted in the fact that no dedicated tape nor disc testing equipment is available for these new high density storage products- leaving error recovery and correction completely to the drive electronics. Although infrequent the environment and the daily use of storage media can both cause catastrophic conditions and subsequent data loss.

The new generation of High-Density tape and disc Storage is technically sophisticated and very complex; in their complexity these storage systems are designed to "hide" media defects and to create an aura of "perceptually carefree performance". For this reason, High Density Storage Devices do not openly provide users with information about media errors and media degradation. The sophisticated error correction and concealment technology employed is of very great benefit BUT not foolproof. Failures while far-between can be catastrophic!

"Carefree" performance is not the major objective for sound data integrity, storage and archiving and a Media Management tool is a necessity to insure the accessibility of this valuable media-data in its original and true form. Access to media performance information and the forecasting of media life expectancy is one important first step in a responsible approach to sound data preservation.

What it does…

• CAPTURES media quality information and records usage/error history information to a media-specific database

• PROVIDES ongoing media quality monitoring in a normal data processing background

• POSTS Automatic quality advisories

• ALLOWS Ad-hoc reporting using Crystal Reports, Excel, etc.
• PROVIDES Local and distributed media monitoring services

Benefits

This exciting new software provides Early Warning notices of storage media problems giving simple real time information about media degeneration and the activity resulting from extensive system error correction and data management. The most obvious benefits are