>>>> Question: Does acetone disolve backup tape?
>>>>
>>>> Answer: Not very quickly.
>>>    No, the answer is 'Yes'.  :oP
>> Question: Which one of us is currently soaking a backup tape in acetone? 
>> Which one of us, therefore, has the experimental data to backup their 
>> position?
> 
>    Erm, no, but while you're doing this experiment, tell me what the backup 
> tape is made of. Would you say it's the same material as an old 45 or LP 
> record?

No idea what's it's made of. Some sort of extremely thin yet absurdly 
strong plastic, but beyond that I couldn't say.

>    What happens if you lift the backup tape out of the acetone? Is the 
> material floppy?

The spool is developing a kind of "cracked earth" pattern on its 
surface, and there's some ferric oxide floating in the liquid now. But 
beyond that, the spool and tape both seem as rock-solid as ever.

Perhaps I need to actually unwind the tape from the spool. That'll take 
a seriously long time though; IIRC, there's about 8 km of tape in there! o_O

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