[plug] Seagate Travan drives, possibly Seagates worst product?

[navarre at plug.linux.org.au]

Hello Richard

Happily I can say it a number of years since I seriously played with tape 
drives from a servicing point of view. I will readily agree that any form 
of serpentine write tape drive mechanism is a poor choice of equipment. 
There usefulness ranges from defective at birth to infant mortality. The 
Seagate and other brands of tape drives called DDS[1-3] (one through 
three ) QIC and the others all fall into this class of defective unit. 
Also DLT is  serpentine write, single spooled, thus is all the tape is 
unspooled from the cartridge one bust wait for the whole tape to be 
rewound onto the removable spool before it can be withdrawn from the tape 
drive. The drive is also 5 ¼ full height form factor.

If I recall correctly the DDS[4-5] units are really DAT drives in 
different clothing.
Personally if I was to use magnetic tape I would use DAT or some other 
form of helical scan writing method. The tapes are generally cheeper, the 
drive does read after write as it steams, and the general reliability of 
the unit puts it the class of dependable.

For a reliable backup I would use a second hard drive, in another 
computer would be best. For archiving I would look to the new DVD RAM or 
ROM technology. 

Navarre 

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Original Message <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

> What are the experiences out there?

> We are looking at moving to DDS4 or DLT drives. What are pros and cons?

> Regards
> -------
> Richard Sharpe, sharpe at ns.aus.com