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Date:      Thu, 11 Nov 1999 07:05:49 -0700
From:      Eric Lee Green <elgreen@iname.com>
To:        Michael Searle <searle@longacre.demon.co.uk>, mjacob@feral.com, Marc van Kempen <marc@bowtie.nl>
Cc:        hardware@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: onStream?
Message-ID:  <99111107110301.32323@ehome.inhouse>
In-Reply-To: <19991111005138.43321@longacre.demon.co.uk>
References:  <199911102306.AAA24666@bowtie.nl> <Pine.BSF.4.05.9911101514410.11884-100000@semuta.feral.com> <19991111005138.43321@longacre.demon.co.uk>

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On Wed, 10 Nov 1999, Michael Searle wrote:
> So DATs are unreliable. They also cost 3 times more than the OnStream. 

And the tapes are half the cost. Depending upon how much data you back up, a
DAT changer could very well be cheaper than the OnStream in a corporate backup
environment with a decent tape rotation.

> Is the OnStream more reliable than a Travan? Because that is the only drive
> of comparable price and capacity that I've seen. 

INFINITELY so. We put tape drives to the torture test in the EST testing lab,
and TR-5/NS20 drives are PATHETIC reliability-wise,  approximately 30% of the
tapes we wrote could not be read back :-(. The OnStream IDE under Linux, by
contrast, has been 100% reliable in our testing (you can get those drivers, for
Linux, at our FTP site at ftp.estinc.com ). It's a shame that it looks like
I'll have to be booting down into Linux to back up my FreeBSD machine (since I
am buying one of those OnStream drives for my own personal use here at home).
Especially since FreeBSD device nodes don't back up right under Linux :-(. 
(Due to brain damage on the Linux side of things, BTW -- not enough space fin
their device struct for the longer FreeBSD major/minor numbers). 

-- Eric Lee Green  eric@estinc.com


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