🚀 go-pugleaf

From article <2e8uot$n54@nuscc.nus.sg>, by isc10033@leonis.nus.sg (Tan Chee Heng):
> : I wouldn't go saying thatthe Colorado systems give 250 meg.  They don't, 
> : period.  They DO have compression though.  In my experience, they seem to 
> : hold about 140-180 MB.  The drives are also noisy, slow, and the tapes 
> : get VERY hot in normal use.  Also, they seem to go forward and backward 
> : during a restore, I don't understand this.
> 
> That's because they have multiple tracks so they only read one track at 
> each pass and then goes backwards while reading/writing another track and 
> so on.

????  I don't think this is correct.  When I am _writing_ a tape, my
drive will stream (continue on without backing up) for exactly 2 minutes
and 15 seconds.  Then there is a brief 2 second pause (not a rewind) and
it streams again for 2:15.

This is not the case when I _read_ the tape.  Mine only streams for
about 15 seconds at a time.

I think it has to do with your computer keeping up with the tape drive
during writing.  If I use less data compression, the drive streams
longer.  I don't know why the tape read operation doesn't stream as
well.  Maybe the decompression algorithm is slower.  Maybe the combination
of my harddrive and disk cache software makes write operations slower
than read operations.

But those Colorado drive *are* noisy, aren't they?  I've never heard
two that sound alike either.  Their noises seem to be as unique as
fingerprints.

Dave Haertig
haertig@att.com