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Date:      Fri, 2 Jun 2000 16:29:00 -0700
From:      Gunnar H Reichert-Weygold <gunnar@paganlibrary.com>
To:        "BSD" <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: Tape backup recommendation
Message-ID:  <00060216404500.00359@gunnar.weygold.edu>
In-Reply-To: <lf3dmwfciq.fsf@Samizdat.uucom.com>
References:  <KFEIIDCJNHBCGLAFNMJIMEMNCDAA.bsd@info-logix.com> <lf3dmwfciq.fsf@Samizdat.uucom.com>

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On Fri, 02 Jun 2000, Chris Shenton wrote:
> On Fri, 2 Jun 2000 01:05:46 -0700, "Hank Wethington" <bsd@info-logix.com> said:
> 
> Hank> Greetings, I'm looking to purchase a tape backup system for my
> Hank> BSD3.4 box. I'd like to be able to back up a 18 GB drive. I've
> Hank> looked at TRAVAN and at DAT. Besides the speeds should I be
> Hank> worried about anything?
> 
> Hank> As price is a major concern, the Travan 20 GB SCSI drives look
> Hank> great, but has anyone had any issues using these in a BSD box?
> Hank> Both the Seagate and HP drives does not say that BSD is
> Hank> supported (but then again, most things that are don't say they
> Hank> are). Is anyone using these? Any other recommendations?
> 
> I've got one of the Travan 4/8GB drives but when I found a 4xDDS2
> changer I started using that instead. Mostly, the Travan media is
> *way* too expensive, like $30 for the 4/8GB, versus $5 for the
> equivalent DDS2. And after just a few uses my drive must have missed
> the end-of-tape mark on the Travan and unwound all the tape off one of
> the spools; I had to through it out; at $30 it this was rather
> annoying. 

If you can afford DAT, that's the way to go. Travan is designed for
workstations while Travan NS is for small netwoks. Breakeven point between DAT
and Travan is about 15-20 tapes. After that, DAT gets cheaper.

Forget AIT. You've seen ads for AIT2 for the last year. Have you seen an AIT2
tape anywhere?  Sony is apparently having beaucoup problems coming up with
media. The only AIT2 media is about 72GB, not even close to the 100GB
it's spec'ed for.

DLT is a good technology for servers. SuperDLT is pretty much the end of the
line, though. They'll have to pull one big rabbit out of the hat to come up
with anything after that other than minor incremental improvements.

If speed and capacity are a higher priority, check out LTO, http://www.lto.org.
Multiple vendors for the drives and media means no shortage of replacements.
Cross-compatibility is part of the spec, so interchanging data is much less of
a problem than it has been in the past.

Ecrix, Onstream, etc. all suffer from the same problems: new vendors with little
tape experience, no future roadmap, single sources, proprietary technology.

BTW, yes, I work for Seagate.

> You might look at AIT and DLT but they're still too expensive. Would
> overstock or refurb units be OK? I got a couple 4xDDS2 changers from
> www.ez-systems.com and really like them. Automating backups is
> *critical* IMHO because otherwise they won't get done. Amanda can
> operate jukes via FreeBSD's "chio" driver; way cool.
> 
> Oh, make sure whatever drive you get is SCSI.
> 
> 
> To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
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-- 

It's not that life is too short, it's that death is too long.

 Gunnar H Reichert-Weygold
    The Pagan Library
http://www.paganlibrary.com
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FreeBSD 3.4----------PalmOS

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