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Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!mips!decwrl!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!ira.uka.de!math.fu-berlin.de!zrz.tu-berlin.de!gmdtub!bigfoot!tmh From: tmh@doppel.first.gmd.de (Thomas Hoberg) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Choice of SCSI tape drive for 386bsd (longish blater) Message-ID: <TMH.92Aug20215543@doppel.first.gmd.de> Date: 20 Aug 92 19:55:43 GMT References: <1992Aug19.083635.214@cc.uow.edu.au> <1992Aug19.112710.25394@olymp.informatik.uni-bonn.de> <1574@hcshh.hcs.de> Sender: news@bigfoot.first.gmd.de Organization: GMD-FIRST, Berlin Lines: 55 In-reply-to: hm@hcshh.hcs.de's message of 20 Aug 92 07:17:40 GMT >In article <1992Aug19.083635.214@cc.uow.edu.au> pejn@cc.uow.edu.au (Paul Nulsen) writes: >>What type of SCSI tape drive would you recommend for use in a 386bsd system? No answer is right for everybody. For SCSI there are three main technologies: 1) 8mm (Exabyte) 2) 4mm (DAT) 3) QIC I believe Exabytes are most expensive per unit, mature technology, widely available and do around 5GB with compression. Tapes are pretty cheap and easy to come by. For a standalone system this may be overkill as you may just have a couple hundred of megs to save. Interoperatability is great with other Exabytes but my friends don't seem to have them :-) Throughput is anywhere from 200KB/s to 500KB/s I believe. DAT is sold by more than just one vendor a little cheaper than Exabyte and holds around 2.5GB currently. Tapes are even less expensive and easier to get. Still DAT doesn't seem to be used by a lot of people, maybe it's not a very transparent market. Don't know about the throughput but it should be better than 200KB/sec, too. QIC comes in many sizes, everything from 45MB to 1.3GB (without compression). A QIC drive can usually read all lower capacity formats, but not write them all. The hurdle is QIC 60 I think. Any drive that will do QIC 120 or better can't write QIC <120 tapes, although QIC 60 media can be used for QIC 120 on such a drive. Tapes can be pretty expensive and more difficult to get for the higher capacities (QIC 525 or better). Throughput is around 90KB/sec for QIC <320 and around 200KB/sec for QIC <1350. QIC 1350 is supposed to be around 500KB/sec. 10GB capacity is promised by the end of the decade (so far the QIC companies have lived up to their promises), so the QIC drives promise the best growing path. I personaly chose a Tandberg 3800 QIC 525 drive, because 1) it allows me to exchange tapes with just about everybody 2) I got lots of QIC 60 tapes for free (which I can use as 120MB scratch volumes) 3) it allowed me to back up even my biggest file system on a single tape (1GB disk, biggest file system is 510MB) 4) Unix doesn't deliver a lot more than 200KB/sec off it's file system when doing backups, so higher tape drive speeds have no practical value, indeed might be slower because the drive might stop streaming. Hope this is of some value, Thomas --- Thomas M. Hoberg | Internet: tmh@first.gmd.de 1000 Berlin 41 | tmh@cs.tu-berlin.de Wielandstr. 4 | Germany | BITNET: tmh@tub.bitnet +49-30-851-50-21 |