From owner-freebsd-scsi Sat Aug 30 23:18:41 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id XAA23056 for freebsd-scsi-outgoing; Sat, 30 Aug 1997 23:18:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: from pegasus.com (pegasus.com [206.127.225.31]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id XAA23051; Sat, 30 Aug 1997 23:18:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: by pegasus.com (8.6.8/PEGASUS-2.2) id UAA14714; Sat, 30 Aug 1997 20:11:32 -1000 Date: Sat, 30 Aug 1997 20:11:32 -1000 From: richard@pegasus.com (Richard Foulk) Message-Id: <199708310611.UAA14714@pegasus.com> In-Reply-To: Mike Smith "Re: Is this (SCSI) tape drive compatible with FreeBSD?" (Aug 31, 11:43am) X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.2.5 10/14/92) To: Mike Smith , mjacob@feral.com Subject: Re: Is this (SCSI) tape drive compatible with FreeBSD? Cc: freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-scsi@FreeBSD.ORG Sender: owner-freebsd-scsi@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk } > >A 250meg capacity is awfully small today, and the tapes are too expensive. } > >They're also excruciatingly slow. } > } > This isn't even 250Meg. It's QIC-120 (120Meg) or QIC-150. } > } } The Viper 150 will happily read and write the 250 and 525MB } extended-length tapes. } } (Yes I have one, yes, I have used these tapes). } } Whilst the criticism that these drives are "slow" and the tapes } "expensive" is not entirely without basis, it's worth bearing in mind } that these drives are *robust*, and properly stored the media are very } stable. I forgot to mention that they're fairly noisy too. } You won't find this in any current drive or media except (perhaps) a } DLT. } Considering the amount of data trasferred, the numbers show and certainly my experiences do; that the Exabyte drives are more robust than QIC. I suppose you could say that QIC was more robust back when they were more widely used and less data was being archived. In today's world they're not all that robust when compared to the alternatives. Richard