Do DV Tapes have a shelf life?

[Brian]

I came across some unused DV Tapes and was wondering if they have a
limited life span or does DV Tape have to be very old before you have
problems with it?

What's the oldest unused DV tape that others have used?
The life might depend on the Brand. These were Sony DV Tapes.

Regards Brian

[ushere]

if they're stored reasonably well (ie. no temp extremes) they should be
good for years.

that said, if you're worried, spool them before using.

leslie

[Richard Crowley]

"Brian" wrote...

Likely life expectancy of many, many decades. The only significant
glitch in tape lifespan was a period about 20 years ago for audio
tape when they were phasing out whale-oil lubrication and some
formulations of Ampex brand tape had a problem called "sticky-
shed". Not a show-stopper, but an annoyance that takes special
recovery methods (moderate baking, etc.) to handle properly.

I've never heard of any similar problem with any brand or formula
of video tape (reel or cassette, analog or digital). in particular,
digital tapes (video or audio or data, etc.) have additional benefits
of built-in error correction and detection.

And since you know that digital data is either a one or a zero, it
makes it much easier to recover data even from very degaussed
media. That is why high-security applications use physical
destruction of digital mag media (including hard drives) because
you cannot rely on erasing or over-writing to completely eliminate
the data beyond recovery.

[Don Stauffer]

Many people I know always forward and rewind a tape before using. If it
winds okay they will use some pretty old tape.