[rescue] Quick EXB-210 questions

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Monday, August 27, 2001 at 14:10:17 (-0400), Kurt Mosiejczuk wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [rescue] Quick EXB-210 questions
>
> On Sun, 26 Aug 2001, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> > (Who the heck would want that junky AIT crap anyway?  It's engineered as
> > if a M$ designer was in control -- ultra-stupid!  STAY AWAY!)
> 
> How so?  I've dealt with them a couple times and had no problems.
> What parts do you find stupid?

well, just compare the drive and the media side-by-side with an
equivalent capacity Exabyte Mammoth drive and media.  They both do the
same thing in more or less the same with, at about the same speed, with
about the same features, on much the same grade of metal particle tape.
Also compare the designed-for duty cycles of the drives and the average
(not burst!) transfer speeds.

Now which one do think was designed for production backups?

Heck you even need special software to take full advantage of all the
extra-cost (per drive *and* per tape!) of the AIT.  Exabyte's SCSI mode
pages aren't exactly 100% standard either, but at least they're fully
and publicly documented and can be used without major driver hacks.  If
you want a machine readable label for your robot Exabyte supports a
standard SCSI bar-code reader in their changers -- heck even Amanda
supports that!

Now of course I wouldn't buy either one because of the helical-scan
nonsense, but I suppose I wouldn't turn down a brand new Mammoth drive
for free, at least not if it came with a set of tapes for free too, but

I would turn down any free AIT drive (unless maybe it was AIT-2, had a
twin or two, and came in a VERY nice rack-mount (or full large
cabinet-size) library with dual-hot-swap robot controllers and N+1
hot-swap power supplies, and 10 years supply of tapes!  ;-).

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

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