Stuart H

Anyone got any ideas where I can lay my hands on an 8mm tape drive for my 'puter. Starting to get sick of backing up my hard drive onto ZIP disks.

Been to a few shops (Dixons/PC World etc) and the staff have looked at me like I've just landed on the last plane from Mars!

Any ideas?

Cheers

S

Nimbus

I'm not supprised. Most home PCs have a CD writer now. Tape backups are mainly used for file servers etc as they have a larger capacity and are not too concered with read/write speeds.

Have you concidered a CD writer? You can get some real bargins at the moment. Although you may want to wait for a DVD writer, whenever that will be...

Shaun

Stuart,

We are in the 21st century now m8.

Would you believe, I just binned 20 yesterday.

Shaun.

Robertio

iTrader: (1)

I'd give

Nimbus

Shaun,

Strictly speeking, the 21st century does not start until next year....

Why do people still get this wrong

barge

The DLT tape drive that you are probaly on about are mainly used on Servers as stated above.

For a PC I would get a CD writer, internals are not to much, externals which I have got are a couple of hundred £.

If you want to over write the backusp use Rewritable else get cheepo worm disks.

Barge.

ChrisB

8mm tape went out with the ark (or there abouts).

I'd suggest two options...

CD-R drive

OnStream Tape Drive (not used one personally but seem good value). Dabs list them

DavidRB

Go on then Nimbus, for what reason?

Stuart H

Reason I wanted a tape drive is 'cause I can't be ar$ed to sit by my PC and change the CD everytime it fills up. Just want to start it then leave it to get on.

Are they really <I>that</I> far out of date?

Shaun,

Get bin-diving then

Cheers

S

boomer

Stuart,

if the backup is simply to protect against a failed disk drive (or virus destruction), why not simply buy a second hard drive and copy your files across at regular intervals?

DLT tapes themselves are very expensive, DAT are cheaper but some folks don't think that they are as reliable. CD-R or CD-RW are only 650MB, which may not be big enough for your requirements.

Also, think about THE RESTORE process as well - it is no good having a fresh backup on a tape (or CD) that you can't read 'cos the application software was destroyed!

BTW, you never mentions what OS you are using (Windows, Linux, DOS?) - which may impact things a tad.

mb

DrEvil

Go for DAT, cheaper and reliable enough..
DLT is mega expensive as a home solution and over kill really.. IMHO

Rgds, Alex

Big Den

Stuart

The guys are correct about 8mm tape being quite old, however, they are still quite widely used in the unix/digital vms arena although DLT is taking over here aswell.

If you are not keen on the cd-writer route there was a format of tape drive called Travan aimed at the home PC user. Up until a year or so ago I was working with a storage device sales & repair company. Just before I left Travan capacities were still increasing. I beleive any PC reseller, poss. even PC world may be able to help.

Wow - that was some post for my first one.

Big Den

Lee

my experience of tapes has been that they always fail just when you need to do a damn restore from them !

at work we use DLT drives only now, not to be recommended for the short-of-wallet !

at home I've got a fileserver with a few spare disks..these can be striped together to make a huge logical volume for backing up onto. I wrote a shell script (yes on NT!) that removes the earliest backup in order to make way for today's.

AllanB

DAT not that popular these days with most people going for DLT or AIT ( similiar back speed ot DLT but far quicker restore ) now that the prices have dropped but still alot of dosh for home use . I'd recommend something like the OnStream Echo 30Gb drive which are gaining popularity. If your not backing up huge amounts of data and are not to worried about the media cost a Jaz drives is a reasonable alternative. Much quicker than a CD-R. If speed is an issue you could automate the back-up process to do incremental backups using something like Dantz Retrospect so you can just leave it to do its own thing whilst your not around then backup speed is less of an issue.

I sell this stuff all day so if you want some help and a silly price just let me know.


AllanB

Ian Cook

DAT or Travan are fine, DLT is far too expensive for a home user, I install this stuff all day

Veritas Backup Exec, One button disaster recovery, allows you to boot from a TAPE, as long as the DAT drive allows it, and will restore everything to a fully working machine in however long the restore takes, it works too had to demo it to a customer ! From a DAT24i HP Drive!!

Dave T-S

Stu
Word has it you HAVE just landed from Mars M8.....(stoopid reply cos I am not an IT expert and can't answer your question)

Puff The Magic Wagon!

iTrader: (2)

Stu

I've got a portable (in a carrier bag) parallel 35mb (bit more with compression) 8mm tape backup device you can have for a pint of lager or 2. Colorado I think it is (inc software).

Stuart H

Recommendations from this lot please:

ChrisB

Stuart,

HP Colorado 14GB (note that's 14GB per tape assuming 2:1 compression). Native capacity is 7GB. The actual amount you can fit on a tape varies depending on what you are backing up.

HP's spec sheet (

The Zohan

Nimbus is on the money here CD is the way to go unless you have huge amounts of material to store or as a server back-up . Access on tape dives is relitavely slow depending on the compression. CD writer/reader is the way to go. access is rapid dependant on the drive speed, still much faster than tape and a more robust method of storage.

Discs are now about 70p or so for 750MB of storage.

Misco do CD writers for about £ 150.00 or so

[This message has been edited by Paul Habgood (edited 13 December 2000).]

Big Den

PTMW

Are you sure that it's an 8mm? At 35Mb & badged colorado it is more likely to be QIC2000 or 1/4". I'm not an anorak or anything but, did, unfortunately, spend just over six years working with tape backup devices.

Big Den

Puff The Magic Wagon!

iTrader: (2)

Ben

You ARE an anorak

You're probably right - I'm just trying to get shot of it & get a couple of pints off Stu

I imagine Stu isn't too concerned about the format & I imagine that 35mb will be too small...

Oh well...

Nimbus

Sorry, OT. But responding to a prod from DavidRB….

The reason the 21st century will not start until next year is as follows;

In 6AD astronomer Dionysius Exiguus compiled a list of dates. He reset the counting years to honour the birth of Christ so that the year 248 Anno Diocletiani became 532 Anni Domini Nostri Jesu Christi, (or 532AD for short ). In doing this he made two mistakes. He left out the year 0 (zero) and he thought Christ was born at the end of the year 1BC (research indicates that Christ was born in 6BC and certainly by 4BC).

Now, a century is 100 years and a millennium is a period of 1000 years (or 10 centuries). The first year of the millennium hinges on the date of the first year AD. The sequence of years going from BC to AD does not include a 0 (zero). The sequence runs 2BC, 1BC, 1AD, 2AD etc. Therefore the first year of the first millennium was 1AD, the one thousandth year was 1000AD. The first year of the second millennium was 1001AD and the last year of the second millennium is 2000. So… The third millennium does not start until 2001AD.

I thank you…..

AWD

Have you tried Simply Computers?

AWD

Have a look in the Simply site under hardware and then tapestreamers.

ChrisB

DAT, DLT and AIT are all too expensive for home users (unless you are really rich, in which case give me some of your cash).

All use a SCSI interface (in my knowledge)which most home users don't have (other than perhaps a cheap SCSI-1 or 2 card for a scanner).

As I said before, either a Travan based system (ie HP Colorado) or the OnStream Echo will offer the best price / performance / capacity solution.

Chris.

ca

Stuart H,

Also bear in mind what would happen to your system (and backups!) in the event of a disaster, i.e. fire, flood, etc..

I've heard of a guy who pops his backup cd in a jiffy bag every month to his Auntie Mable in Devon.

HTH

C

AWD

Yeah - but Auntie Mable probably feeds it to her mutant son in the cellar

Tapestreamers are a good alternative to DAT for the home user.

I would recommend a CD writer personally - especially with the low cost of both the writers and media. Also the backup can be read on any computer with a CD drive.

[This message has been edited by AWD (edited 13 December 2000).]