Date: Fri, 9 Apr 1999 23:40:23 -0400 (EDT) From: Dan Janowski <danj@3skel.com> To: Joerg Micheel <joerg@cs.waikato.ac.nz> Cc: freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: DDS-2/DDS-3 drives Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9904092329100.27348-100000@fnur.3skel.com> In-Reply-To: <19990408135519.B1051@lucy.cs.waikato.ac.nz>
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On Thu, 8 Apr 1999, Joerg Micheel wrote: > Hi, > > [this might as well belong to -questions]: > > For some project people here are interested to own a DDS tape drive. I do have > no experience with these drives and would be interested in any stories you > may have to tell about how reliable they are, how well they work with > FreeBSD (or other OS: Solaris, Linux), what tapes may cause trouble etc. > You may respond privately, unless it is of general interest. > > Thanks for your time! > > Joerg Micheel Aaah, DAT. I've had some mixed experience. Right now I have a Seagate da0: <SEAGATE ST39173W 4290>. It is a DDS-3 drive. I had an HP, it went bad. I had an identical Seagate, it went bad. The real problem seems to be the tape, not the drives. On good authority the recommendation is Maxell tape above all others, Sony, HP, etc. To DDS-3 media the drive will sustain about 1MB/sec native, with a 12GB native capacity. The failures I had with previous drives seemed to be related to some bad HP tapes. A bad tape can damage heads. The busted HP drive could read tapes but not write them. DLT is excellent. Very stable, good performance and capacity. But $4500-$4700 for a DLT-7000 is a chunk. I think DDS-3 drives are at or below $1k. The DLT-4000 is cheaper, but DDS-3 gets really close to the performance, and at a better price. FreeBSD deals very well with DAT, and when there are problems it tells you. As with any tape drive, my recommendation is to buy it from a company that will be there when it breaks. In other words, it depends. Illumination only, no real answers. Dan -- Dan Janowski danj@3skel.com Triskelion Systems, Inc. Bronx, NY To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message
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