🚀 go-pugleaf

Eyal Lebedinsky (eyal@eyal.emu.id.au) wrote:
: In article <5idgkq$pcr@minkirri.apana.org.au>,
: 	abo@minkirri.apana.org.au (Donovan Baarda) writes:
: > G'day all,
: > 
: > I've got a bit of a dilema, I've managed to find some pretty good prices
: > in Australia for three different (brand new) tape drives. I'm after a
: > cheap but reliable backup drive for my linux system.
:  
: Look at the media price too, it makes a big difference. How many tapes
: do you expect to use? For my home system, doing long-term off-site
: backup cycle and temporary regular backup cycle, plus some spares, I use
: about 25 tapes.

: Personally, I will go with DAT any day, due to track record (very good)
: and portability (you will find most sites can use DAT).

People keep mentioning the good track record of DAT, but the only concrete
examples I have heard are things like, "worked OK for 1 year, then stopped
recording", and even "worked OK for a week, then started to fail on
recovering tapes, after sending the drive back and forth for replacements
and repairs many times, we gave up and got a DLT".

Does anyone have any real examples of DAT working reliably, or is this
just a myth that has been propagating for so long everyone has started to
belive it? In particular can anyone offer any comparisons to the newer TR4
drives?

From the raw stats, the TR4's look like a higher performance drive than
DSS2 even. The only problem is the tapes cost about three times as much,
but if TR4 takes off, that could soon change.

ABO