From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Jul 31 21:14:14 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id VAA25839 for questions-outgoing; Wed, 31 Jul 1996 21:14:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gdi.uoregon.edu (cisco-ts11-line15.uoregon.edu [128.223.150.130]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id VAA25834 for ; Wed, 31 Jul 1996 21:14:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (dwhite@localhost) by gdi.uoregon.edu (8.7.5/8.6.12) with SMTP id VAA00414; Wed, 31 Jul 1996 21:14:03 -0700 (PDT) Date: Wed, 31 Jul 1996 21:14:03 -0700 (PDT) From: Doug White Reply-To: dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu To: "Jeffrey M. Metcalf" cc: questions@freebsd.org, metcalf@imagine.com Subject: Re: What are DAT tape drives? In-Reply-To: <9606318388.AA838835862@ccgate1.bms.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Wed, 31 Jul 1996, Jeffrey M. Metcalf wrote: > I was hoping somebody could quickly describe to me what DAT tape > drives are, their varieties, and how their support and performance is > under FreeBSD. Do you know where I could get good deals? DAT stands for "Digital Audio Tape" and is a newer form of the original casette tape. They are larger (resembling 8mm videotapes) and hold more data. Like the casette storage devices of old, many DAT-based tape backup solutions have sprung up recently. The cost of the device and tape is offset by their incredible storage capacity -- up to 8GB. There are two main classes of DAT encoding: DDS-1 and DDS-2. DDS-2 is newer and can hold more but is more expensive All the DATs you'll find are SCSI interfaced and as such are compatible with FreeBSD. The most recommended are made by HP. A search of the mail archives should reveal the relevant part numbers. Hope this helps and maybe someone who actually knows something about DAT can comment. :-) Doug White | University of Oregon Internet: dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu | Residence Networking Assistant http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~dwhite | Computer Science Major