Date: Tue, 9 Apr 96 18:31:03 MET DST From: Greg Lehey <lehey.pad@sni.de> To: peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) Cc: doc@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Tape drive FAQ Message-ID: <199604091516.RAA02326@nixpbe.pdb.sni.de> In-Reply-To: <199604081311.IAA19012@bonkers.taronga.com>; from "Peter da Silva" at Apr 08, 96 8:11 am
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> > Here's the sort of thing I'd like to be able to answer from the FAQ: > > OK, I've got all these DC600 cartridges around the place. I'm using an > Archive QIC-02 drive through an MT-02 SCSI-QIC adaptor. I'm looking for > a better tape drive and there are some decent-capacity SCSI-QIC drives > I can probably convince my wife to go for, that are big enough I can use > Amanda profitably (600MB partitions don't go into 60M tapes even if I get > Amanda to use gzip-9). But am I going to lose it on the cartridge cost? That, of course, depends on how many cartridges you buy :-) > She's ruled out DAT unless I can get a DAT drive for well under the $550 > that's the best price I can manage. I'll be damned if I'm going to buy one > of those ghastly Floppy Tape things without Jesus Monroy's mythical driver. I understand that this is just an example, but I suppose there are a few things we should pick out here: 1. Current 'real' QIC units start at 525 MB, and 1 GB hardly costs any more than 525 MB. Over here, I can buy a 525 MB Tandberg 3820 for about $500 + tax, and a QIC-1000, also from Tandberg, will cost about $600. 2. DDS units cost only a little more nowadays. Over here, (I'm guessing), you would probably not get one for $550, but you would for $650. 3. If you're backing up 600 MB partitions, you'll need at least a QIC-1000. QIC-1000 tapes cost (another guess) $25 a throw. Buy a drive and 10 cartridges (for 10 GB), and you've spent $850. 4. 90m DDS cartridges cost (I know this one) $5.50 each, and store 2 GB (I'm assuming that the el cheapo drive you're talking about doesn't compress). A DDS drive and 5 cartridges would thus cost $680 odd. 5. Buy more tapes (and who doesn't?), and the comparison looks even better for DDS. 6. Other advantages of DDS: it's quieter, faster, the likelihood of being able to back up your complete system/network is higher, the cartridges take up more space. 7. Advantage of QIC-xxx: in my experience, it's been more reliable. Of course, we should mention somewhere that DDS drives need frequent cleaning. Other ideas? Greghelp
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