[Sunhelp] High Capacity Tape Drives

[Gregory Leblanc]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: George Thiruvathukal [mailto:x86 at lemont.rice.iit.edu]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 03, 2000 12:23 PM
> To: sunhelp at sunhelp.org
> Subject: [Sunhelp] High Capacity Tape Drives
> 
> Has anyone here had any luck with some of these newer high 
> capacity tape
> drives?

Sure, my AIT works fine.  :-)

> One in particular that looked good was the Compaq 50GB AIT 
> drive - that's
> 50 gigs on a single tape! More with compression turned on.

Uhm, no (well, I'm 95% sure, anyway).  :(  Compaq's AIT drives are all
AIT-1, which is 25GB native, 50GB compressed.  Some of the AIT-1 drives can
take the longer tapes, for a native capacity of 35GB.  The newer AIT-2
drives have a higher capacity (I can't remember how big, but bigger).

> It looks nice and the documentation says it's compatible with 
> Solaris x86
> through the "cpqncr" driver (I believe). Unfortunately, that 
> driver is not
> present on Solaris 8 for Sparc.

Oh, Solaris.  I dunno.  Mine work fine under NT, VMS, and linux, I haven't
tried Solaris yet.

> Usually tape drives I've used have gone through the "st" 
> driver. And this
> looks like a standard UltraWide SCSI single tape drive.
> 
> Is there any reason why this wouldn't work with the normal 
> "st" driver?

I can't think of any, I don't recall loading any special drivers on any OS
that I've run these drives.

> Or does anyone have any suggestions for other AIT or DLT 
> drives that may
> work with Solaris. I've kind of outgrown DAT/DDS.

Get an AIT straight from Sony.  It's probably cheaper, and you still get a
3yr warranty from them.  Depending on you much you need to store, the 35GB
native tapes are available, and I think the AIT-2 should also be available.
I don't know anything about drivers for Solaris, sorry.
	Greg