*BSD News Article 92541


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From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Tape drive recommendations?
Date: 2 Apr 1997 00:30:27 GMT
Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden
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tgs@cats.ucsc.edu (Thomas Gunnar Sparks) wrote:

>  I have a Jumbo 250 Tape (120MB) and it works nicely 
> under dos, but I've never used it in freebsd :)

It might even work.  My old Colorado (Jumbo?) QIC-40 drive which i'm
using to occasionally test the ft driver does its job, although it's a
mess compared to the SCSI drives, and i simply don't trust it much
more than i trust a /dev/null. :-)

> I'm looking into DAT or 8MM for tapes.. QIC is ok, but a tad slow..
> Supposedly the QIC-Wide drives are supposed to go DAT speeds, but I doubt 
> it... a 2GB QIC-Wide can be had for 180$ though.. might be worth a shot..

Uh, DAT is fairly fragile (and abrasive).  The experience with 8mm
drives is vastly different, and Exabyte is (unfortunately) a true
firmware-patch-of-the-week company.  There are many reports of good
results with their drives, but at least as many reports of miserable
failures.

Modern QIC drives meet the DAT speeds.  My Tandberg 4222 (2.5 GB plus
compression) gets ~ 180 KB/s with 1 GB cartridges, that's about the
same as an HP-DAT DDS-1 drive does.  The Tandberg goes better with 2.5
GB cartridges, between 300 and 500 KB/s.  Still, this is not the 900
KB/s and more you can get with some modern DDS-2 drive, but it's often
more than the disks can deliver (if they start seeking during the
backup).

Sure, if you need more, head for DLT...

-- 
cheers, J"org

joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)