VXA tape drives design defect from Ecrix/Exabyte

For those of you thinking of buying one of these VXA -1 tape drives
because you've seen the ads with the backup tape sitting in the cup of
coffee and the claim that the data is still there.....


the drives apparently have a fatal flaw that have been known since
2001 according to a post I found by using google.

If your drive locks up as it is writing the header and you cannot get
the computer to respond and do a hard reboot, you can kiss everything
on the tape goodbye because the next time you read the tape it will
think there is zero on it. After it happened to me, I did a google
search and found a post from a guy who got screwed in 2001. Called
Exabyte and they could do nothing but offer me the addresses of some
recovery firms like Ontrack.

Arthur Begun