[SunRescue] Tape drive

[James Lockwood]

On Sat, 19 May 2001, Ken Hansen wrote:

> I've not used them before, but *big* DLT drives go for about $200 (15/30
> GB/tape).

That's a reasonable deal, but 15GB uncompressed isn't that big anymore.

> Media cost is probably prohibitive, but these are typical SCSI drives and
> should work fine with everything you listed. I use 8mm at my house for
> backups, but the biggest tape drive I hve is an Exabyte 8500. These drives
> can typically be gotten for under $100, and media costs are lower (but so is
> the density, you will use a lot more of the 8mm tapes than a single DLT
> tape)...

I've bought 6 Exabyte 8500's in the last 6 months and haven't paid more
than $30 for any of them.  A bit of hunting on Ebay can produce good
results, my most recent purchase for $14 included a nice external 5.25"
case.

For cheap storage per GB, 8mm rules the roost.  Assuming a decent drive
(85xx), you will pay under $1 per GB for tapes, and the drives are
relatively cheap.

"A lot" is relative.  I get 7/14GB on my Exabyte 8505XL and pay roughly
$5/tape.  DLT would cut my tape requirements in half but it isn't worth it
for me for the increase in price.  I've been impressed with the VXA-1
drives recently.  35GB per tape, and media is around $1.50/GB.  This gets
comparable density to high end DLT drives but with a cheaper drive and
much cheaper media.

IMHO Exabyte Mammoth at 20GB uncompressed per tape isn't worth going with.

> You should really try and determine how muc stuff really need to be backed
> up - you may find that a backup strategy based on reusing CD-RW media may
> suffice...

You would need a pretty small amount of data (and to already have the CDRW
drive) for this to be economical.  For the cost of a cheap CDRW drive
($100?) you could get an Exabyte 8500 and a dozen tapes for about 60GB of
capacity.

What the world really needs is a cheap high capacity tape stacker.  The
margins on equipment with nothing more than larger magazines are obscene.

-James