Backer: Storing data on VHS tapes (2003)

I remember seeing the original proprietary one with amazing claims of multiple gigabytes on a standard blank VHS cassette, this was in the days of 1.44M floppies, 28k modems, and maybe if you were on the cutting edge a 56k modem and 100M zip drive.

I never got one, and they clearly didn't sell well as they'd vanished in a couple of years. They were advertised in computer magazines and my local Tandy had them in store.

It always annoys me, even now, that tape backup capacities are quoted as the "compressed" volume. Tell me the uncompressed, I know roughly how much my data will compress by (text, sure lots. Already-compressed video? Forget it). Got very irate with vendors when I last looked at LTO tapes around the LTFS/LTO5 time.

I don't know anything about its data encoding, but Alesis had a system--ADAT--that stored 8 trackes of 24bit, 48khz audio on SVHS tapes. There was a period of time in which it was a pretty revolutionary product. It preceeded the time when storing lots of digital audio on your local computer was practical (1991/1992).

Significantly worse than https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArVid

I think I still have an ISA bus Backer card in a box somewhere.

I got it second-hand for not much money and was pleased to have it. At the time, it was the only practical way for me to back up my 500MB harddrive.

My vague recollection is that the software that was supplied with it, for windows 3.11, could store about 500MB on a three hour VHS tape.

I tried various settings in the software and reading a tape holding files of mostly under 1MB in size always gave a checksum error on two or three files.

A different VCR might have worked better.

I would let a backup run for three hours, wait another three hours to play back the tape then copy the few files that could not be read to a floppy disk and keep it with the video cassette.