🚀 go-pugleaf

I am interested in owning a 150MB tape drive for (using the Teac CT-600N 
tapes).  This is primarily due to a recent Disk Express catastrophe 
(fortunately fixable, but a real pain).

There are currently five different drives available via mail order (as
advertised in the "big two"), one of which I have been using (evaluating 
under a 30-day money-back guarantee).  These are:

   Shamrock's Orchard  [the one I am trying out -- available "locally" to me]
   Everex's EMAC 150T
   MacCrate's
   MicroNet's
   Dolphin's Flipper

I am somewhat unhappy with the software accompanying the Orchard drive (but
I have only had the drive since yesterday, and am waiting on the software
manual to arrive next week sometime).  It provides for an image backup 
capability, that can only be restored to the drive it backed up (or perhaps
a drive with the same name with the same or larger size (?? where ?? 
indicates haven't tried yet).  In either case, it apparently only backs
up the non-free space files, but I wasn't quite brave enough to restore
it until I am completely prepared.

It also provides file by file backup, but I have not had any success yet;
it has crashed very near the end of the restoration phase twice -- each time 
being preceeded by an individual backup (perhaps the tape is defective - I'm
not sure what error -1024 means (yet ??)).  I am attempting to backup
approximately 100M and move it to another partition on my drive.  The 
crashing behavior may be the cause of some of the folders/files ending up in 
the wrong place folder-wise, but the most irritating characteristic is that 
the modification dates of all restored files are of either (all of this
was discovered yesterday) the date the file was backed up or the date the 
file was restored (same day, so can't quite tell); in any case, it is not 
the date on disk.

The file software is script driven, so will supposedly backup whatever
file(s) you want and any subset thereof, although it appeared to avoid
backing up my [bracketed] folders (ala DiskFit).

The drive itself appears to be pretty nice though.

Anyway, I was wondering whether any of the other four drives provided a 
better piece of backup software; to me this means:

 1. files will keep their original creation/modification dates
 2. folder hierarchy structure will be retained and view preferences
 3. backup sets can be placed on any disk/partition as long as there is
    sufficient space for them

I've also read that (no real details) some of the popular backup utilities 
that we all use and love will be providing support for the
Teac-based drives real soon now.  Is anyone aware of which applications
these might be, and whether they will support the 150MB density?
And when exactly (more or less) such versions will be available?  I
use a combination of DiskFit/floppies and still more floppies to keep a
complete backup set (+/- a few files here and there).

Also, any opinions on the overall reliability of the 150MB Teac hardware
platform?

Thanks...

  -- Frank Malczewski        (malczews@castor.usc.edu)