Very Computer

Hi!

I am running a WWW site on a Dell Pentium PC under 2.1R.  For backup purposes,
I need to buy a tape drive that preferably could store the entire filesystem
which has 1.2G of data (several tapes is fine too.)  Does anyone know of the
best tape drive in terms of both capacity and ease of installation?

Thanks a lot in advance,

                                -Andrew

: Hi!

: I am running a WWW site on a Dell Pentium PC under 2.1R.  For backup purposes,
: I need to buy a tape drive that preferably could store the entire filesystem
: which has 1.2G of data (several tapes is fine too.)  Does anyone know of the
: best tape drive in terms of both capacity and ease of installation?

I use a 4/8Gb DAT.  It cost #700 two years ago.  I think it goes for
about #650 now.  It stores all my data on one tape, is easy to install
(it's SCSI - all SCSI is easy to install), it's also external.

If this is more than your budget, I would still suggest getting SCSI.
Also, buy something that is at least twice the size of your hard disk.
This makes it (a bit) future proof.

--

Don't _EVER_ lose your sense of humour....

It's in the same price region as a DAT drive, but many people consider
helical drives (DAT, 8 mm video Exabyte) a poor backup solution.

--
cheers, J"org

Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)

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If you are going to be using a LOT of tapes, then a DAT drive may
be cheaper in the long run because of the media costs. But...

That being said, I recently picked up a Conner (now Seagate) TapeStor TSM4000R
SCSI QIC MiniCart drive for less than half the price of a DAT. It holds 2G
native on a QIC-3080XLF QIC Wide tape. I bought it primarily for my Win95
system but I do have FreeBSD installed for testing. I did a quick tar and it
seemed to work fine. Under Win95 I did a full backup (with compression) and got
about 38MB/sec with 1G of data.

Dave

[David Fisk]

| If you are going to be using a LOT of tapes, then a DAT drive may
| be cheaper in the long run because of the media costs. But...
|
| That being said, I recently picked up a Conner (now Seagate) TapeStor TSM4000R
| SCSI QIC MiniCart drive for less than half the price of a DAT. It holds 2G
| native on a QIC-3080XLF QIC Wide tape. I bought it primarily for my Win95
| system but I do have FreeBSD installed for testing.

I can confirm that the 4000 works fine under FreeBSD. The only thing I don't
like about it is the cost of the tapes.

--
cheers, J"org

Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)

You can also get an Exabyte drive used for cheap.  These are simple
SCSI-1 devices that are built slightly tougher than your average brick.
One $5 tape holds 2.3GB.  I've seen 8200s used on the net for $250-$300.

-Matt

Quote:

>That would be stunning, assuming the SCSI bus runs at 10 MHz and
>is 8 bit wide (=> 8 MB/s). ;-)

Oh well...