[aclug-L] Re: SCSI tape drive recommendation

[Bob_Deep <bobd@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ryan Claycamp wrote:

> > You'll want to check out both to see which is least expensive and most
> > appropriate for your needs.
> >
> 
> How reliable are used drives?  Should we just bite the bullet and buy
> new?

Ryan,

There are two ways to decide what drive is right for you, but before you
start you need to decide exactly what it is your tape drive is going to
be used for.

1.  Decide up front how much you want to spend on the drive and the
necessary tapes to accomplish what you need to accomplish... Then buy
the best drive and tapes you can afford.

2.  Determine what the minimum requirements for your drive are.. Through
put, tape capacity, reliabliity of the data, internal/external and
such.  Then go out and buy the cheapest drive that meets your
requirements and a box of blank tapes and forget about what it costs,
because if it's the minimum you need, it's the least cost you can get.

But you need to be honest with yourself about what you need.

If you are backing up your system, then you need to decide what sort of
backup tape system you are going to use.  We use daily incrementals,
with a weekly backup for our 18 Gig of storage space.

With this scheme, we can get most of our tape operations to happen at
night, unattended.  Incrementals and a good part of the weekly backup
run at night, and the second tape of the full backup runs first thing in
the morning..

At home, I have 6.4 Gig of data, that gets backed up using a *slow*
floppy based tape drive that can handle 3  Gig tapes.  You don't need
fast when you are running unattended, you just need to have large tape
capacity.  To that end, a slow floppy based tape drive may suit your
needs just fine, and be much cheaper than a basic SCSI drive.

Just remember.. Tape drives are *not* fast, they are extreamly slow,
even the best of them are slow.  So go for the tape drive that handles
the largest capacity tapes you think you will ever need and figure on
inserting the tape before you leave at night...

> Ryan
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