That would be a reason to stop using anything made by HP. One should not encourage such business practice.
A slightly off-topic anecdote: At work we use ZIP drives as our daily backup. Each day of the week has an own tape cartridge. These cartdriges were made by HP. After a while of usage we got a message that would warn of data loss, if the cardridge is not replaced by a brand new one within a certain timeframe (I think it was 30 days). So there was plenty of time to get new cartridges, right? Well, it turned out that as soon as the message popped up the cartridges were not been overwritten when we inserted the cartridge of the day. We found out two weeks later when we wanted to restore some files out of that backup. After that incident we switched the manufacturer of those tape cartridges and never hat any problems since.
We then decided not to use any HP products anymore since. I wouldn’t even use a HP mouse out of principle! HP is scum.
Zip drives (do those things even exist anymore?) do not use tape cartridges, they are basically oversized floppies.
If you’re actually using tape drives (LTO media, presumably), just step away from the damn HP software. I manage literal petabytes on tape, and LTO media comes with a lifetime warranty. Yes, even HP branded cartridges - there’s only two actual manufacturers left, Fujifilm and, iirc, Sony.
Same for the drive, in fact - HP stopped producing them years ago, IBM is the only manufacturer left.
That would be a reason to stop using anything made by HP. One should not encourage such business practice.
A slightly off-topic anecdote: At work we use ZIP drives as our daily backup. Each day of the week has an own tape cartridge. These cartdriges were made by HP. After a while of usage we got a message that would warn of data loss, if the cardridge is not replaced by a brand new one within a certain timeframe (I think it was 30 days). So there was plenty of time to get new cartridges, right? Well, it turned out that as soon as the message popped up the cartridges were not been overwritten when we inserted the cartridge of the day. We found out two weeks later when we wanted to restore some files out of that backup. After that incident we switched the manufacturer of those tape cartridges and never hat any problems since.
We then decided not to use any HP products anymore since. I wouldn’t even use a HP mouse out of principle! HP is scum.
Zip drives (do those things even exist anymore?) do not use tape cartridges, they are basically oversized floppies.
If you’re actually using tape drives (LTO media, presumably), just step away from the damn HP software. I manage literal petabytes on tape, and LTO media comes with a lifetime warranty. Yes, even HP branded cartridges - there’s only two actual manufacturers left, Fujifilm and, iirc, Sony.
Same for the drive, in fact - HP stopped producing them years ago, IBM is the only manufacturer left.