*BSD News Article 94556


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From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Finding Reliable DAT Drives
Date: 27 Apr 1997 09:08:11 GMT
Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden
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kientzle@netcom.com wrote:

> I know that Joerg is pretty pessimistic about DAT in general, but I'm

So this safes me from a full followup. :-)

>   * I've seen a couple of SCSI QIC drives that come close;
>     are they really any better?  (They're no cheaper once you
>     factor in the $30 tapes)

They are better since they avoid the helical scan problems
(complicated mechanics).  The cartridge price is basically a non-issue
once you consider that the cartridges have about 10 times the lifetime
of a DAT cassette.  I'm still able to use 1990 vintage QIC-150
cartridges all day.  (Large workstation vendors used to ship their
software upgrades on them before the invention of the CD-ROM.  So now,
you can get piles of these tapes for free with a little luck.  They
are too small for backups, but good for data exchange still.)

-- 
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. ;-)