Tape drive test [TAPE] |

(Applicable to BurnInTest Pro version only) Tests the tape drive connected to the PC. Drives can be connected via the SCSI bus, IDE bus or any other method supported by Windows 2000 (and later). Note that Windows 2000 and later operating systems no longer supports tape drives that use the floppy disk interface. The tape drive to be tested can be selected from the Test Preferences window.

A blank tape (media) is required to run this test. If the tape is not blank any existing data will be overwritten and permanently lost.

There are three optional steps that can be included as part of each test cycle. See the Test Preferences window for more details.

Test description

The test is carried out by writing a number of files onto the tape, rewinding the tape and then verifying the files were correctly written by re-reading them from the tape. A progress bar shows the percentage complete for the current test cycle. The contents of the files will correspond to a particular data pattern. The following patterns will be used in a cyclic manner in the following order.

Sequence (0,1,2...255)

Binary 1 (10101010)

Binary 2 (01010101)

Zeros (00000000)

Ones (11111111)

The number of files created and the size of each file can be set in the Preferences window. The tape needs to be large enough to contain the number of files selected plus a small amount of overhead for file marks.

A test cycle is completed each time all the files have been written and re-read. A cycle may end prematurely for some errors conditions. The number of ‘Ops’ reported in the main window is the total of the bytes read and bytes written.

Pattern

The current data pattern that is being used to fill the test files. (see the list above)

Bytes Written

This is the total number of bytes that have written to the tape

Bytes Read

This is the total number of bytes that have read from the tape

Errors

This is the number of errors detected.

Throughput (R/W)

This is the measured throughput for the tape drive. Measured in MB/Sec. A separate value is maintained for reading and writing. A few large test files will result in better throughput compared to many small ones.