[rescue] Exabyte 8500 questions

[James Lockwood]

On Fri, 26 Jul 2002, Michael Hansen wrote:

> There is one thing that is making me nervous,
> though. The drive only seems to make tape
> drive type noises at the beginning and end
> of the dump. The rest of the time it is
> virtually silent. By tape drive type noises,
> I mean the "whirrrrrrp... grind-grind-grind"
> that I am used to from PeeCee cartridge drives
> and Archive 1/4" drives I have used in
> the past. Are 8500s (and possibly other 8mm
> drives) supposed to be this quiet?

They don't make much noise if you can keep them streaming.  QIC drives
tend to make more noise as they have to reverse and switch tracks
frequently.  Helical scan drives (4mm, 8mm, etc) sound more like a VCR in
operation.  Listen very closely and you'll hear a hum.  My Ecrix VXA-1
drive (33/66GB on helical scan media) is louder due to the variable speed
motor, but not by much.

> The other question I have is, can anyone
> point me toward a source of reasonably priced
> 112 meter x 8mm media for this thing?

Just about anywhere.  Try Micro Warehouse at warehouse.com.  You can fit
5GB onto each 112m tape and you shouldn't pay more than $5/tape in
quantity.  I wouldn't use video grade media (which you can) given that
data grade is so cheap.

8mm is still one of the cheapest media formats around in cost per GB.  If
you have a chance, the upgrade to an Exabyte 8505XL or Eliant 820 (7/14GB
on 160m tapes, backwards compatible with the 112's) is worth it.

-James