🚀 go-pugleaf

Thank you, kind people who have offered me advise on mass storage.
To my disappointment I saw no mention of writable optical disks, but
then, that's an exotic technique (I'm still interested in it).

Several people have mentioned the poor quality of Ehman drives, but
since I think a removable hard disk would be best for me, I'll be
going for some of these (not Ehman, though)

The best replies (who sum up what I got) were:

werner@astro.as.utexas.edu writes:
- I bought a TEAC-tape drive with 150meg capacity for $455
- (without case, power-supply or software);  I organized a
- mailing-list teac@rascal.ics.utexas.edu to discuss the drive
- and there is currently a group purchase being organized
- which should push the price to below $400.

blob@apple.com writes:
- Many of my colleagues are using a Syquest-based 45Mbyte removable hard 
- disk.  I'm using Mass Microsystems, but there are many others on the 
- market.  All use the same internals, so there shouldn't be too many 
- differences.  The cheapest I've seen is Ehman.

- For larger quantities of information, we've been using a Northern Telecom 
- server which contains a 940 Mbyte hard disk plus a 2.3 Gbyte tape backup 
- unit (helical scan?) using standard video 8mm tape cartridges.
- The latest prices I've seen for the Exabyte drives alone is between 4000
- and 5000 dollars US.  That's very expensive.  They use standard 8mm
- Video 8 cartridges (I just bought some cartridges at the local video
- store.)

hammen@csd4.csd.uwm.edu writes:
- I would seriously consider getting one of the 45 MB SyQuest removable 
- cartridge drive systems. They have the speed of a hard drive (and can be 
- used as one if your main drive goes down), are Finder-accessible, and
- much more convenient than tapes. Furthermore, they are getting cheaper - 
- $795 (U.S.) for a drive, plus $85 for each 45 MB removable cartridge.

-- 
This is your fortune from h+@nada.kth.se:
Silver's law:   If Murphy's law can go wrong it will.