[GLLUG] Tape drives

[Edward Glowacki]

On Thu, 2003-07-24 at 10:07, Mark Szidik/mlc wrote:
> 
> 
> I need to buy a tape drive for some new systems coming and am wondering
> what people are using and like.  I have in the past used all DAT drives and
> have been happy with their reliability and low cost of tapes.  However, 20
> GB native capacity is not going to cut it for these new systems.  I am
> looking at LTO-1 drives 100GB native capacity and SDLT drives with 160GB
> capacity. The LTO-2 drive 200GB native is about out of my budget. These
> drives will have the capacity for me, but I am wondering how well the
> drives themselves hold up to daily backups and how well the tapes last.  I
> was shocked to see that the LTO-1 tapes cost about $45 each and the SDLT
> tapes are $145 each and LTO-2 tapes are about $100 each.  I guess I was
> used to $12 for a DDS4 tape.
> 
> Any comments?

We've had pretty good luck here with AIT tapes.  AIT-3 is 100GB
uncompressed, and the AIT-3 drives are backward compatible with AIT-1
and AIT-2 media (25GB and 50GB uncompressed per tape, respectively). 
Also, if you have a lot of data to backup, a tape loader is REALLY nice
to have (regardless of what kind of tapes you choose).

-ED

-- 
Edward Glowacki			glowack2 at msu.edu
A PBS mind in an MTV world. 
	-- Author unknown