Re: travan tape drive

["Robert G. (Doc) Savage" <dsavage@peaknet.net>]

On Fri, 2006-03-10 at 20:24 -0600, hbrhodes wrote:
> does anyone have a travan tape drive that holds around 20/40 gigs or 
> 40/80gigs they are interested in selling?  Would be about two weeks 
> before i could purchase one.

Bentley,

It's been a very long time since I saw a true Travan tape drive. So long
in fact that I really doubt they ever came anywhere close to today's
20/40 gig capacities.

Virtually all tape drives with tens of gigabytes capacity are SCSI types
rather than EIDE/ATAPI (or USB2). This means you'll have to buy an SCSI
"host adapter" card. (Technically it's not a controller because most of
the intelligence is built into the end devices, not the card.)

Coastal Micro Supply has lots of info about tape backup systems on their
web site (http://coastalmicrosupply.com). If you're sure you want tape,
you should be looking for a "DDS4" 4mm DAT drive. An internal model can
be had new for about $270 (used - try eBay). If you don't already have
an SCSI host adapter, that will cost you another $160. Cabling is a bit
more.

By now I hope you're thinking "There's got to be a better, less
expensive alternative." For significantly less than a tape drive & host
adapter above, you can buy a large (250GB) hard drive in an external
USB2 enclosure. It will connect in seconds, work perfectly, out-perform
a tape, and require no special software.

--Doc


-
To unsubscribe, send email to majordomo@silug.org with
"unsubscribe silug-discuss" in the body.