From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Jan 10 13:50:19 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from gate.tellurian.net (gate.tellurian.net [216.182.1.1]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8EDD437B405 for ; Thu, 10 Jan 2002 13:50:12 -0800 (PST) Received: from walt99 (unverified [216.182.21.33]) by gate.tellurian.net (Rockliffe SMTPRA 4.5.6) with ESMTP id for ; Thu, 10 Jan 2002 16:50:11 -0500 Message-Id: <4.2.2.20020110164926.00a87950@popd.betan.net> X-Sender: walterbetanc@popd.betan.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.2.2 Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 16:50:04 -0500 To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG From: Walter Betancourt Subject: Re: Tape Drives Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG David, thanks for the insight, My first thought was to use a hard drive for backup, but I see the 'big' boys all using tape so I figured there must be a downside to using a hard drive vs tape. At 01:42 PM 1/10/02 -0600, you wrote: On Thu, Jan 10, 2002 at 11:12:10AM -0500, Walter Betancourt wrote: > Anyone have good/bad experience with tape drives ? Good ones are expensive. I've never been disappointed with Seagate/Conner/Archive SCSI DDS (4mm) drives. > I'm looking to get a tape drive for backup of 20gb server DDS-4, AIT, and DLT are candidates. You might consider purchase of cheap 30 or 40G ATA drives and mount in quickie removable plastic trays which seem to be under $20 each. Not terribly impractical when a 35G DLT tape's price is compared. Dell Optiplex PII-300's are coming off 3 year leases in droves at the moment. Not hard to find a clean one for $120. Put FreeBSD on it. Mount one of those removable ATA trays. Connect to the same network as your server. Backup to the removable HD. When 5400 RPM 40G HD's hit $115 I bought one for work and installed it in my PowerMac G4-400. Retrospect runs every night backing up my Mac's other HD's and (4) Windows NT systems. One nice thing about the HD is that there is much less wear and tear than with tape drives. Never have to clean the HD's heads. -- David Kelly N4HHE, dkelly@hiwaay.net ===================================================================== The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its capacity -- the rest is overhead for the operating system. Walt To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message