From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Apr 9 09:42:34 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id JAA23768 for questions-outgoing; Tue, 9 Apr 1996 09:42:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nixpbe.pdb.sni.de (mail.sni.de [192.109.2.33]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with ESMTP id JAA23754 for ; Tue, 9 Apr 1996 09:42:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from nerv@localhost) by nixpbe.pdb.sni.de (8.6.12/8.6.12) id RAA02807 for questions@FreeBSD.org; Tue, 9 Apr 1996 17:24:39 +0200 Message-Id: <199604091524.RAA02807@nixpbe.pdb.sni.de> Subject: Re: Tape storage. To: jeff@stat.uconn.edu (Jeffrey M. Metcalf) Date: Tue, 9 Apr 96 18:38:58 MET DST From: Greg Lehey Cc: questions@FreeBSD.org In-Reply-To: <9604040842.AA12627@ruddles.stat.uconn.edu>; from "Jeffrey M. Metcalf" at Apr 4, 96 3:42 am X-Mailer: xmail 2.4 (based on ELM 2.2 PL16) Sender: owner-questions@FreeBSD.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > In reference to an earlier mail message, > > I decided that since I have IDE drives and no SCSI controller, I should > get a Colorado T1000 QIC-80 tape drive. I'm afraid that was an unfortunate choice. QIC-80 drives are mechanically and electrically unsound (i.e. unreliable). > However, I am having problems using it. Yes, I'm afraid so. What kind of problems are you having? > Right now I am running a generic kernel with ft0 at disk 2. I > assume that I must reconfigure the kernel and put it at disk 1 since > all I have is a 3.5in at fd0 and no 5.25. Is this correct? No, that's not the problem. The problem is that it's almost impossible to write a tape driver for these abominations that works under a multitasking operating system. > Also, the documentation for ft mentions that > 'Formatting and verifying are unsupported at this time you must rely on > your own backup program.' > > What exactly does this mean? This means that you need special programs to format and verify the tapes. They probably run on DOS, and they're probably supplied with the tape drive. Greg