[rescue] Tape drive woes

[Phil Stracchino]

On Tue, Sep 14, 2004 at 11:14:47AM -0700, Sheldon T. Hall wrote:
> Phil Stracchino writes ...
> 
> > Does anyone have any suggestions on where I might possibly
> > lay my hands on a retired-but-working AIT/VXA/Mammoth/LTO/Ultrium/whatever
> 
> > class tape drive, in the event that my VXA-1 has indeed
> > rung down the heavenly curtain and joined the choir
> > invisible?
> 
> I have an Exabyte 8mm 5GB drive that's surplus to my needs.  Ditto an IBM
> DDS-2 (2/4 GB).  Would either of them help?  Either could be yours.

They'd probably work at a pinch, though I'd need to buy an unholy number
of tapes or drastically cut down on my backup sets.  (There's currently
around 120GB of data in my full-backup set, while weekly differentials
incrementals run 2-3GB or so and incrementals run on the order of
1-1.5GB a night.


> I replaced them both with a couple of DLT-IIIxt drives I bought off eBay.
> The DLTs seem to be working OK, albeit the media are _expensive_.

DLT, right, that's the other format I was trying to think of and totally
blanking on.  About how much did you pay for them, and what's the
capacity of a DLT3?

(Though I generally try to avoid buying from eBay unless I can get the
item BIN ....  it's not worth the frustration of getting sniped in the
last ten seconds or watching the price go up $300 in the last two
minutes.)


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