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Subject: Re: Tape drive FAQ
To: peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva)
Date: Tue, 9 Apr 96 18:31:03 MET DST
From: Greg Lehey <lehey.pad@sni.de>
Cc: doc@freebsd.org
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?
Greg