*BSD News Article 3981


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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!uunet!mcsun!Germany.EU.net!news.netmbx.de!zrz.tu-berlin.de!math.fu-berlin.de!informatik.tu-muenchen.de!rommel
From: rommel@Informatik.TU-Muenchen.DE (Kai-Uwe Rommel)
Subject: Re: Choice of SCSI tape drive for 386bsd (longish blater)
References: <1992Aug19.112710.25394@olymp.informatik.uni-bonn.de> <1574@hcshh.hcs.de> <TMH.92Aug20215543@doppel.first.gmd.de>
Sender: news@Informatik.TU-Muenchen.DE (USENET Newssystem)
Organization: Technische Universitaet Muenchen, Germany
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 22:36:45 GMT
Message-ID: <1992Aug20.223645.4622@Informatik.TU-Muenchen.DE>
Lines: 32

In article <TMH.92Aug20215543@doppel.first.gmd.de> tmh@doppel.first.gmd.de (Thomas Hoberg) writes:
>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

The QIC-1000 (1GB) drives (such as Tandberg 4120) do 200k/sec as well
as 300k/sec (switchable). Tandberg has recently announced a 2GB device,
the 4200, which will also do 300k/sec.

>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.

Perhaps the BSD FFS delivers more? I did not yet get around installing
386BSD (I have it laying around here) and it does not yet work with my
tape drive (Tandberg 4120) properly (it can access it but delivers lots
of error messages). However, under OS/2 2.0 with HPFS I get a througput
of 16.5MB/min (~280k/sec) and the tape keeps usually streaming.

This seems faster than affordable DAT's (which are still more expensive
than the 4120) for which I could get specs (SONY) when I went shopping
for the new tape drive recently.

Kai Uwe Rommel

/* Kai Uwe Rommel --- rommel@informatik.tu-muenchen.de */

DOS ... is still a real mode only non-reentrant interrupt
handler, and always will be.                -Russell Williams