tape drive info wanted.

[Conor P. Cahill]

rbe at yrloc.ipsa.reuter.COM (Robert Bernecky) writes:
>I'm looking into high capacity backup drives for a system which is
>initially going to have a 1.2gig scsi disk on it. I discarded the

For performance you might want to consider a pair of 600 MB drives or 4 330 mb
drives. (Yes, I know the cost goes up as you do this, but you sound like 
the system is going to be a high cost item and the extra cost used to get this
gain in performance may be minimal when compared to the overall system cost).

>idea of QIC tapes as being too slow, even though I have this sneaky 
>feeling that if I get tapes in the mail from people, they'll be qic format.

If you want a high capacity and high speed backup drive both 4 & 8mm will do.  

If you want to be able to share data via the tapes, you will have to get
a QIC drive because it is the prevalent format and because most people can't
afford the extra cost of the high capacity tapes.

>- Exabyte is the sole manufacturer of 8mm tape drives. They have
>  higher bandwidth and capacity than 4mm tapes. They may do a better
>  job of read/write error handling.

I find this hard to believe, especially when you pick up a copy of a 
unix rag and find advertisements from companies like media cybernetics
who have thier own 8mm product.

>- Many (14 or so?) companies make 4mm DAT drives. Someone at Exabyte
>  said that there appeared to be some compatability problems among
>  tapes written by different firms' drives. 

I would take this with a grain of salt, comming from Exabyte.  The only
4mm drives I've used are HP's, so I don't have any experience with 
compatibility.

>- Exabyte claims to have better in-field reliaility. The 4mm pundits
>  claim fewer moving parts, ergo better theoretical reliability. However,
>  since they have only been out for a year or so(?), in-field reliabilty
>  cannot claim to compete with Exabyte.

Sounds like marketing hype to me.

>By the way, I received two responses on a previous posting about
>R Squared and inexpensive Fujitsu drives, which were basically
>favorable - their prices are the lowest I've encountered, and I'll
>probably order my Fujitsu drive from them. Ditto the tape, if I can
>decode on format...

Why not post the info.

-- 
Conor P. Cahill            (703)430-9247        Virtual Technologies, Inc.
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