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From: Tony Griffiths <tonyg@OntheNet.com.au>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Iomega SCSI zip drive experiences?
Date: Sun, 27 Oct 1996 10:50:37 +1000
Organization: On the Net (ISP on the Gold Coast, Australia)
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Message-ID: <3272B1DD.33F8@OntheNet.com.au>
References: <54t3of$bqd@trumpet.uni-mannheim.de>
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To: User fs29 <fs29@rumpelkammer.uni-mannheim.de>
User fs29 wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I'm currently looking for an efficient way to do an automatic daily backup.
> Weekly backups go to a DAT streamer, but this is not a practical solution for
> 100-200K per day. A local dealer suggested to use an SCSI zip drive for the
> daily backup.
> What do you think about this method? Are there any known problems with
> zip drives under FreeBSD (2.1R)? Is the technology reliable?
>
I've got 2 ZIP drives (SCSI) and have used them on 486, Pentium, and DEC
Alpha systems without any problems, both as backup devices AND system
boot devices. I even managed to squeeze a mininal DEC Unix (aka OSF/1)
system onto a cartridge (which is 96MB by the way - 100,000,000
bytes!). FreeBSD fits just fine in the available space and is not TOO
unresponsive!
The only 'problem' I've seen is FreeBSD spitting a "SCSI Attention/Media
may have changed" message on the console when I change a cartridge.
Apparently, the SCSI disk driver doesn't think that this is kosher.
Of course with dump/tar, you treat the ZIP like a great big floppy drive
if you want prompts for media changes.
My disktab entry looks like-
zip100|iomega100|iomega ZIP 100 96Mb:\
:dt=SCSI:ty=???:se#512:nt#64:ns#32:nc#96:\
:pa#16384:oa#0:ba#4096:fa#512:ta=4.2BSD:\
:pb#16384:ob#16384:tb=swap:\
:pc#196608:oc#0:\
:ph#163840:oh#32768:bh#4096:fh#512:th=4.2BSD:
Don't know what should go in the 'type' field!?
> Thanks in advance!
>
> Bye,
> nmh.
>
> --
> /* Nils M. Holm <fs29@rummelplatz.uni-mannheim.de> */
Tony