Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 07:21:58 -0700 From: Eric Lee Green <elgreen@iname.com> To: Michael Searle <searle@longacre.demon.co.uk>, "David W. Alderman" <dave@mmrd.com> Cc: hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: onStream? Message-ID: <99111507320802.02708@ehome.inhouse> In-Reply-To: <19991112161515.48117@longacre.demon.co.uk> References: <199911102306.AAA24666@bowtie.nl> <4.2.2.19991111144543.00ad2330@192.2.2.24> <19991112161515.48117@longacre.demon.co.uk>
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On Fri, 12 Nov 1999, Michael Searle wrote: > I've looked up the Ecrix site and the drive looks very impressive - speed > and reliability better than a DLT-4000 but at DAT price (for the drive, not > the $80 tapes...). Is there anyone using this drive who can give me more > information about it? I'm not using it personally, but Tim is (Tim Jones, w/the BRU guys), and he keeps running down the hall shouting "Hallaleu!" (if you don't know what I'm talking about, you're not a redneck :-). He once said to me that he could have any tape drive shipped to him by any manufacturer for free for testing purposes, but the Ecrix is one that he would actually pay money for. BTW, he used to work for a tape drive manufacturer (Archive), so I suspect he does know tape drive hardware fairly well :-). > Any problems with it? The only problem I see is that they do not yet have a tape changer. There's also the problem that they need those special tapes :-(. Still, for $899, you get a bloody fast 25-gig drive... > Does the 'variable speed' feature reduce the capacity of the tape? (as in > floppy-tapes) Nope. > How well does the compression work? (and does it pass through compressed > files or bloat them like the DAT drive mentioned here? At the quoted 6MB/s, > software compression would mean something cack like LZO on all but the fastest > CPUs.) State-of-the-art compression. There was an article in Smart Reseller or maybe it was Computer Reseller News that compared the VXA with the latest incarnation of the Exabyte Mammoth (well, they're both an 8mm format, right?!), and they mentioned that the VXA had the best compression they'd ever seen (but the Mammoth had the capacity lead as well as tape changers, etc.). I don't know how well it does with compressed files, though. - Eric Green, eric@estinc.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message
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