Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2001 23:21:44 -0800 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@freebie.atkielski.com> Cc: <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: SCSI tape back that works under FreeBSD Message-ID: <000101c17714$2abf0ea0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <008901c17671$360f02e0$0a00000a@atkielski.com>
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>-----Original Message----- >From: Anthony Atkielski [mailto:anthony@freebie.atkielski.com] >Sent: Monday, November 26, 2001 3:55 AM >To: Ted Mittelstaedt >Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG >Subject: Re: SCSI tape back that works under FreeBSD > > >Ted writes: > >> Heli-scan technology was a good thing when it came >> out, but today there's DLT which is much better in >> terms of reliability in a production environment. > >I'd use DLT if it didn't cost four times as much as DAT for both drives and >media. With the light use I give my drive, and the fact that the >drive reading >the tape is always the same drive that wrote it, I hope not to have >any problems >any time soon. > I myself use DAT at home, light duty, and have had no problems. I mainly wanted to emphasize that while DAT is fine for light use, it won't stand up to a tape cassette's worth of data totally rewritten every night for a year. You have to be a little careful when recommending solutions to note the environment they work in. >> When that figure starts to rise then get the tape >> drive realigned before you start tossing tapes. > >Is realignment any cheaper than just buying a new drive? > It depends on the drive - on the Exabyte 8mm drives it certainly was. On the others, not so much. But there's another reason to do periodic alignmnets - hardware compression. DAT tape is pretty interchangeable from manufacturer's drive to manufacturer's drive as long as the drive's hardware compression is switched off. But if it's turned on, some drives use compression schemes that other's can't read. It would suck mightily if you had 3 years of backup tape saved up, all hardware compressed, and you replaced the tape drive and found all old tapes to be unreadable. Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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