[rescue] Tape Backup

[Sheldon T. Hall]

Folks-

I have, and even use, an HP SureStore 5000 DDS-2 tape drive for backup.  I
use it in its low-density (2 GB) mode, since it seems to me that his would
be more reliable.

It has, however, written some tapes that I couldn't read, later, when I
needed them.

I use ufsdump to write the backup tapes.  This is at home, but the data
backed up includes data important to my wife's business, as well as items
I'd rather not do without.

So ... my questions:

Is this an OK drive?

Would running it in compressed mode be any less reliable than normal mode?

Is there some tweak to ufsdump that would increase reliablilty? (I'm backing
up mounted filesystems during quiet times)

Would some other drive be better?

Anyone got a "some other drive" I could rescue cheaply?

If you think I should get something else, but don't have one, what should I
get?  What should I avoid?

Thanks.

-Shel

--
Sheldon T. Hall
shel at cmhc.com
206-780-7971