Date: 11 Sep 1998 11:41:06 -0400 From: drt@snoopy.ne.mediaone.net (David R. Tucker) To: stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: SCSI tape drives Message-ID: <86btomac8d.fsf@snoopy.ne.mediaone.net> In-Reply-To: dag-erli@ifi.uio.no's message of "11 Sep 1998 03:03:31 %2B0200"
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dag-erli@ifi.uio.no (Dag-Erling Coïdan Smørgrav ) writes:
> Andy Farkas <andyf@speednet.com.au> writes:
> > User GregGreg Shenaut wrote:
> > > : Does anyone here have any experience with SCSI Travan drives under
> > > : FreeBSD? If so, how are they working out?
> >
> > Whether or not it was my fault, I left a AU$50 tape in one of these
> > drives for a couple of days, and when I went to do a backup, I was
> > informed by the software (amanda) that the tape was unusable. When I
> > pulled the tape out of the drive and looked at the surface of the tape,
> > it had creases on it from where the tape-head was resting on the tape!
>
> Hmm...
>
> My Travan streamer gets *very* hot (though not hot enough to scold),
> and even when idle, it's noticeably hotter than some of my hard disks,
> so I never leave tapes in it.
I haven't had either of these problems. My ordinary practice is to
run a Level 0 dump every night, but I have gone away for over 3 weeks
leaving a single tape in the drive with no problems. This is on my
home machine and I only have 1 GB of data, so I have yet to run into
the end-of-file problem mentioned in another message (although now
that I know about it I'd love to know that B figure, as well). And of
course, the tapes are notoriously expensive, running US$30 retail or
so.
I have found that retensioning each time as part of the backup script
is a good idea, because otherwise I can get errors beginning with the
second filesystem backed up. I have restored from scratch with no
problems.
The upshot: I like mine, but I've never seen them praised on any
FreeBSD mailing list or newsgroup. So, they would seem best for
smaller applications where backups can be arranged so as to fit on a
single tape, where money is tight, and where the need to buy a lot of
expensive tapes won't eat up all your savings. Otherwise, despite my
experience, they're probably not worth the risk, especially in an
environment where administrators are paid to be risk-averse with data.
--
David R. Tucker drt@pobox.com
"I may be wrong, but I'm not Clearly Erroneous."
-Judge Hillman
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