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From: grog@lemis.de (Greg Lehey)
Organisation: LEMIS, Schellnhausen 2, 36325 Feldatal, Germany
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Reply-To: grog@lemis.de (Greg Lehey)
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Subject: Re: DDS-2 (was: ....)
To: bugs@freebsd.netcom.com (Mark Hittinger)
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 09:39:49 +0100 (MET)
Cc: hackers@freebsd.org (FreeBSD Hackers)
In-Reply-To: <199601101634.KAA14200@freebsd.netcom.com> from "Mark Hittinger" at Jan 10, 96 10:34:15 am
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Mark Hittinger writes:
>
>>> I'd definitely choose the HP1533A !
>>> It is some three times faster than the Conner,
>>> i.e. does 514KB/s (times compression factor).
>>> Regarding DDS-2: I've heard multiple times, that DDS-2 tapes are not
>>> reliable. And since somebody had recorded nuclear physics data on
>>> DDS-2 tapes and had found no way to read back more than a few MB, I
>>> tried myself and now would never again trust 120m DDS-2 tapes.
>
>
> I strongly recommend the WANGDAT 3400DX DDS-2 device.  It has a hard time
> with DDS-C tapes but it is a screamer on DDS-2.  I never had any trouble
> with them and have used them on several different platforms.  

I've had nothing but trouble with them.  On BSD/OS, with a BT 946C
controller, they hang the controller and the system, and you have to
power the system off to get the problem to go away.  This happened on
two different machines.  I suspect that this is a firmware problem,
and new firmware would solve the problem, but it turns out that
WangDAT service is non-existent over here.

> On one system
> I was regularly backing up more than 10 gig each day to one tape!

That depends on your data, not on the drive.  The DDS-2 recording
format is standardized.  I get less than 8 GB with my mix.

Greg