[rescue] OT: Exabyte tape drive question

[Mike Katchabaw]

Hi all,

I've tried asking about this on comp.periphs.scsi a couple of times,
without any luck.  I've lurked around this list for a long time, and
there seems to be several knowledgeable people here, so I thought what
the hey ...

I recently got a hold of an Exabyte 8505XL tape drive.  This, of
course, is an internal drive, but I don't have any free bays.  So, I
was able to find, at a really good price, some external SCSI cases
that were originally designed for the Toshiba XM6201 CDROM drive.
Unfortunately, I noticed afterwards that none of the cases had fans in
them, nor were there any free connectors or mounting holes for a fan
(so I guess the case or the original CDROM was designed to not need
them in the first place).

My concern though is that, during a long backup, the tape drive will
overheat and cause problems without a fan.  There are ventilation holes
in the case, but I'm not sure if that's enough.  I have run some short
tests that last a few minutes, and everything works fine.  I'm afraid
of trying anything longer for fears of some kind of heat problem.
>From what I have heard, Exabyte drives run fairly cool compared to
most tape drives, and won't generate any heat when sitting idle.
Nevertheless, I am still a little worried about it.

Will the drive overheat without a fan?  If that could be a problem,
what could I use the case for?  Would a CD writer or DVDROM drive
be fine in such a beast without a fan?  (I have a CD writer in
an old Sun case that has a fan, so I could swap if I need to.)

Any help or pointers you can give are greatly appreciated!  If you
know a better forum for this kind of question, it would help too!

Thanks in advance,

Mike Katchabaw.
(katchab at csd.uwo.ca)