Date: Fri, 06 Feb 1998 09:35:10 -0800 From: "Michael L. VanLoon -- HeadCandy.com" <michaelv@MindBender.serv.net> To: Jamie Clark <jamie@erinet.com> Cc: freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Q: Opinions on which Tape Drive to Buy? Message-ID: <199802061735.JAA08728@MindBender.serv.net> In-Reply-To: Your message of Fri, 06 Feb 98 09:56:43 -0500. <34DB24AB.A9706B89@erinet.com>
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>I'm in the market for a tape backup system for both FreeBSD and Windoze >95. I'm looking for at least 4 GB uncompressed capacity at a street >price for the unit (not necessarily including interface card) around >$375. What models have you had good experiences in installing, >operating, and with its technical support among those in the market. >I've never bought a tape drive for a PC. Though, I'm experienced with >the major PC peripherals regarding installation and configuring. >The system is an Intel Pentium 200 MHz with 32 MB. Windoze space is a >little over 5 GB and FreeBSD space is about 1.8 GB. I do have plans of >increasing disk space with another disk to allow keeping uptodate with >FreeBSD-Stable. I'd recommend you spend a little more on the drive, and a lot less on the tapes. In the deal, getting a far better drive. The best decent-priced drives you can get are 4mm DAT drives (DLT drives might be better, but they're WAY expensive). If you're super concerned about cost, you might consider getting a referbished one. Although there are probably several sources for these, one you might check out is http://www.insight.com/. Check out their blue plate specials. 4mm DAT drives basically come in two flavors these days: DDS-2 and DDS-3. DDS-2 is 4GB uncompressed, 8GB compressed, with the 120m DDS-2 DAT tapes. You can get these tapes for $15-$20 if you shop around. Backup speed is approximately .5MB/sec. DDS-3 is 12GB uncompressed, 24GB compressed, on a 125m DDS-3 tape. I paid about $25 per tape for these. Backup speed is roughly 1-1.5MB/sec. You'll find variations on these numbers, but that's a good start. Calculate how many tapes you'd like to have in an ideal world to keep rotating backups on all your computers, then calculate the cost of the drive *and* the tapes, and compare it to one of the cheaper drives. Insight has a refurbished Conner/Seagate (Archive, actually) DDS-2 drive with 4GB/8GB for around $450. I've had a drive similar to this for quite a while, and it has worked great. If you can dig a little deeper into your budget, they might still have some refurbished Seagate (Archive Python) DDS-3 drives left for ~$665. I just bought one of these, and it's an awesome drive. So, don't just look at the specials they have listed, hit the specials search page and type in variations on "DDS" "DDS2" "DDS-2" "DDS3", etc.... ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael L. VanLoon mvanloon@exmsft.com michaelv@MindBender.serv.net Contract software development for Windows NT, Windows 95 and Unix. Windows NT and Unix server development in C++ and C. --< Free your mind and your machine -- NetBSD free un*x >-- NetBSD working ports: 386+PC, Mac 68k, Amiga, Atari 68k, HP300, Sun3, Sun4/4c/4m, DEC MIPS, DEC Alpha, PC532, VAX, MVME68k, arm32... NetBSD ports in progress: PICA, others... -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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