Re: Need an 8 mm tape recommendation
Hi Pedro --
> I need to buy and install an 8mm tape system for our debian systems.
> If you happen to have one up and running, could you drop me a note
> telling me things like:
>
> - Tape system brand name,
I have an Exabyte 8505.
> - Connection type (serial/parallel port, internal, etc.),
SCSI.
> - Software used to access the tape (I only see something called
> "taper" in the debian distribution),
tob is also in the distribution; it is superior to taper in these ways:
whereas taper uses direct ioctl calls, tob is a shell script that
uses well-known and well-tested device I/O programs such as cpio, afio,
and/or (depending on the users' choice) tar.
I belive that tob is also much easier to set up; the documentation is
far superior.
> - Any other info that could guide me.
I think an Exabyte is way too expensive, slow, and inconvenient for what
it does nowadays. Also at the present, I am currently having trouble
obtaining its rated capacity (5 GBytes); I can't seem to get more
than 1.5 GBytes onto it.
Exabytes are also not competitive on a cost/MB basis with Jaz drives, which
are now down to $400 for the drive plus $95 for each 1 GB platter (at least
that's what they cost a couple of weeks ago), and are MUCH faster.
If I needed a lot of storage space, I'd look into the DEC cartridges
(DLT drives?) that hold about 40 GBytes. My understanding is that
Seagate will be coming out with a very large capacity device like these
for well under $500 this Fall.
HTH,
Susan Kleinmann
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