From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Dec 23 17:38:23 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id RAA08606 for freebsd-questions-outgoing; Wed, 23 Dec 1998 17:38:23 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from allegro.lemis.com (allegro.lemis.com [192.109.197.134]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id RAA08601 for ; Wed, 23 Dec 1998 17:38:19 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from grog@freebie.lemis.com) Received: from freebie.lemis.com (freebie.lemis.com [192.109.197.137]) by allegro.lemis.com (8.9.1/8.9.0) with ESMTP id MAA10034; Thu, 24 Dec 1998 12:08:01 +1030 (CST) Received: (from grog@localhost) by freebie.lemis.com (8.9.1/8.9.0) id MAA14638; Thu, 24 Dec 1998 12:07:58 +1030 (CST) Message-ID: <19981224120758.B12346@freebie.lemis.com> Date: Thu, 24 Dec 1998 12:07:58 +1030 From: Greg Lehey To: rick hamell Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: SCSI Tape Drive Recommendations? References: <19981223143817.Y85005@freebie.lemis.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.91.1i In-Reply-To: ; from rick hamell on Tue, Dec 22, 1998 at 09:06:25PM -0800 WWW-Home-Page: http://www.lemis.com/~grog Organization: LEMIS, PO Box 460, Echunga SA 5153, Australia Phone: +61-8-8388-8286 Fax: +61-8-8388-8725 Mobile: +61-41-739-7062 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Tuesday, 22 December 1998 at 21:06:25 -0800, rick hamell wrote: > >> The silence is deafening, isn't it? The question is ``reliable''. I >> find most tape units unreliable. At the moment I'm still using DDS >> drives, but I haven't had any that have survived more than two years, >> and refurbishing seems to be a waste of money. General consensus is >> that Travan drives are even worse than DDS or Exabyte, but that may be >> prejudice. > > From what I've seen, half the problems with tape drives has been > dust on the optics. An HP tech support person has suggested to me a > weekly cleaning with an approved HP cleaning tape, something most people > don't seem to do. :) They tend to more nowadays since drives start flashing LEDs if you don't. I've done so religiously on all except my first DDS drive, and they still fail on me. > For the price of some of the high-end Exobyte tapes, I'd probally build > a second machine to backup too. Even if you're low on money, a 2nd hard > drive will still be a good investment. They're still *very* expensive compared to disks. The cheapest DDS drives cost about $500. For that you can buy a couple of 8 GB disk drives, and that might be a better way to do backups :-) Greg -- See complete headers for address, home page and phone numbers finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message