[Coco] So, does anyone know where to get disk drives?

[Steven Hirsch]

On Mon, 2 Sep 2013, Mark J. Blair wrote:

>
> On Sep 2, 2013, at 15:47 , Steven Hirsch <snhirsch at gmail.com> wrote:

>> As murderous as it is intended to be on magnetic media, I was quite 
>> surprised at how difficult it is to wipe a DLT 70 tape with the beast. 
>> A few passes that suffice for the average video cassette have little to 
>> no effect on a DLT tape.  That's one of the main reasons I swear by its 
>> successor, LTO.  Since the LTO has a pre-written servo track, I've 
>> never tried to sacrifice one but expect it would be a bear (DLT drives 
>> can format from scratch).
>
>
> That's interesting to me. I haven't used DLT or LTO yet, but all of the 
> cartridge tape formats I've used in the past (QIC, DAT, etc.) have left 
> me very unimpressed with their reliability. I'd choose old fashioned 
> open-reel 9-track tape over any of the cartridges I've used, if I had a 
> 9-track tape drive and a huge air-conditioned vault to keep the 
> mountains of tapes in. If DLT and/or LTO are really good, then maybe I 
> should invest in some new-fangled tape hardware for backups and 
> archival.

The older, large format QIC tapes were actually quite reliable.  It was 
the little ones that hung off floppy controllers that gave the format a 
bad name.  I have some 15 year old QIC-1000 and QIC-525 tapes that still 
read fine.

Rotary-head formats (DAT and 8mm) were just wretched.  The less said about 
them the better.  I have yet (knock wood) to have any reliability issues 
with either DLT or LTO tapes.  If you are really fussy, the LTOs have a 
statistics block that gives you a correctable error and pass count.  I was 
fortunate enough to pickup a large plastic storage bin full of LTO-2 tapes 
for $25 at a Ham Fest, so it made sense to pickup a few drives.  Haven't 
paid more than $50 for any of them.  We all need to find our own comfort 
level with backups and this meets mine quite well.

The biggest challenge to using LTO or DLT with contemporary system boards 
is the need for a PCI-E SCSI adapter and LVD cable and terminator.  The 
adapters do show up on eBay periodically, but expect to pay $80-100 for 
one.  If you have plain old PCI bus, you're in a much simpler situation 
since Adaptec 2940 family controllers are a dime a dozen.

Steve


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