From owner-freebsd-hardware Mon Jun 17 08:01:21 1996 Return-Path: owner-hardware Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id IAA23401 for hardware-outgoing; Mon, 17 Jun 1996 08:01:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: from persprog.com (persprog.com [204.215.255.203]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id IAA23392 for ; Mon, 17 Jun 1996 08:01:13 -0700 (PDT) Received: by persprog.com (8.7.5/4.10) id JAA11840; Mon, 17 Jun 1996 09:51:03 -0500 Received: from novell(192.2.2.201) by cerberus.ppi.com via smap (V1.3) id sma011837; Mon Jun 17 10:50:56 1996 Received: from NOVELL/SpoolDir by novell.persprog.com (Mercury 1.12); Mon, 17 Jun 96 10:47:18 +0500 Received: from SpoolDir by NOVELL (Mercury 1.12); Mon, 17 Jun 96 10:47:14 +0500 From: "David Alderman" Organization: Personalized Programming, Inc. To: Sean Eric Fagan , hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 10:47:13 EST Subject: Re: Tape drive questions/recommendations Priority: normal X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Windows (v2.31) Message-ID: <11742273747@novell.persprog.com> Sender: owner-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > From: Sean Eric Fagan > So I've been looking at other tape drives today. A place called the Disk > Drive Depot has an Archive drive of some sort, DAT, with a 4 tape > autochanger. I don't know the model number yet, 'cause they were closed > today. > > So... the Archive one, if it works and has a decent warranty, would be my > preference (since I have all these DATs here that I've been doing backups > on, and I'd like to be able to use them should I need to pull something off > ;)), but I do want something reliable and that works flawlessly with > FreeBSD. > > So, how about it, folks... anyone know anything about this Archive drive, or > have preferences for the others? > Drive Depot is also known as CSC or Corporate Systems Center. The drive you are referring to is a DDS changer. This means that you use DDS (2 Gig) tapes that support 4 Gig hardware compression. I have one here on an SCO system (don't hit me!) and it works fine. you can manually change tapes from a front panel controls or you can send it commands (if you have/write appropriate software) from the system. It has a front panel display that shows you the current status in text format so you know which tape is in and what it is doing. I believe Seagate/Conner/Archive has discontinued this drive in favor of a DDS-2 unit that costs more, but it is IMO a good value. If someone else has something good or bad to say about Archive DDS drives I would like to hear about it as well. With SCO, we sometimes get hangs on our older Archive DAT drives. I've been blaming this on the software (since I can't look at the source like some OS'es I use!). I have not seen this with FreeBSD at all. ====================================== When philosophy conflicts with reality, choose reality. Dave Alderman -- dave@persprog.com ======================================