High Capacity Tape Drives

[Sean Batt]

steve at lucifer.UUCP (Steve Goodwin) writes:

>Due to conflicting advice, we would welcome opinions and experiences
>with tape backup systems other than standard 9 track tape on
>Pyramids.

Good move Steve!

>Specifically Exabyte drives, DAT drives and the 3480-based
>'autochanger' drive.

We run a DAT drive "supported" by Pyramid in Australia. The
advertising blurb we were sent showed reasonable specs: 500MBytes per
hour, 40 second access to any file on the tape, greater reliability
than simmilar exabyte drives.

Well, those specific claims above turned out not to be true. LET ME
STATE HERE THAT THIS IS ALL MY PERSONAL OPINION AND IN NO WAY REFLECTS
THE POSITION OF THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY.

We get no where near 500MBytes/s, probably close to 140MB/s; the
pertec interfasce does not support the fast scan mode of the physical
drive (grrrrrrrrrr!), and we get regular drive hangs based on (from
what I've heard) a dissagreement about who's standard is the right one
re some timing problems between the drive and the pyramid pertec
controler.

Mail me for more information. I'm due to go on leave in 5 minutes :-)

Sean
--
------------- Sean Sebastian Batt - sean at coombs.anu.edu.au --------  .______. 
-------- Coombs Computing Section - Telephone: +61 6 249 3296 -----  | Damn |\
-- Australian National University - GPO Box 4 Canberra City 2601 --  | Fine |/
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