[Ryan Heid]

I'm starting a business and I'll need a tape drive for customers backups. What's the largest, most economical tape drive I can get?

Links would be helpful. Also, I have OS X.

[G4ME]

i think a firewire HD mirriored would be the most econimical thing right now, tape drives have come and gone, its all about major GBs in a small package.

[Ryan Heid]

*sigh* I figured I'd get responses like this. I want to know about tape drives, it's required for my business. I don't want to know about what YOU think I need...

[G4ME]

well since you arn't paying and don't care about the costs, i have always had great sucess with my Lacie equipment so i would have to recomend them it has firewire, have no clue what tape it uses but looks solid. hope this will help


BTW any chance of convicing the higher athorities that tape drives are so passé, you can almost a TB of storage for the price of that tape drive.

good luck

[-Q-]

Originally posted by Ryan Heid:
*sigh* I figured I'd get responses like this. I want to know about tape drives, it's required for my business. I don't want to know about what YOU think I need...

Good luck getting clients with that attitude.

[scottiB]

Originally posted by G4ME:
i think a firewire HD mirriored would be the most econimical thing right now, tape drives have come and gone, its all about major GBs in a small package.

Not for final archiving. One might need to store data off-site, too, if I inferred correctly from the original post. To procure business, for example, our small design firm needed to show customers our archiving system and proof that projects would be secured off-site in case of catastrophe.

I'm starting a business and I'll need a tape drive for customers backups. What's the largest, most economical tape drive I can get?

You need to provide a little more information. What is the size of the projects for back-up? Less than a GB? Greater than 20? What type of Mac will be the drive be attached, and via what interface are you looking (SCSI, USB, FireWire)? Do you need the same format as your customers (meaning greatest compatability)? How will the drive be used (for daily, weekly, or just for final archive)? What's your overall back-up strategy (are you backing-up you entire system every night, just certain files, etc.)?

First step is to purchase Dantz Retrospect Desktop Backup (Retrospect Express doesn't have tape drive support). It supports all major formats: SCSI/USB/Firewire tape drives including 8mm, ADR, AIT, DAT, DLT, LTO, QIC, Travan, VXA, and autoloaders (up to 8 slots). Some drives do bundle it.

Unless you have two SCSI Macs, I'd suggest FireWire or USB. That way, if one Mac goes down, you can read tapes in from any other recent vintage Mac (iMac, iBook, etc.).

Regarding formats, the most popular currently are AIT, DLT, DAT, and Travan. Typically, DAT drives (and media) are the cheapest (they can be found on eBay for $200-300), but they have smaller capacity tapes (4-8 GBs, uncompressed). Travan drives are more expensive ($400) and the cartridges are more expensive ($30 or so for 10GBs uncompresed). DLTs are usually SCSI (and used a lot in mechanical changer libraries), but single drives can be found on eBay. The usual capacities are 20 to 40GBs uncompressed. I'm unfamailiar with AIT and ADR drives. Tape capacities are usually listed in uncompressed/compressed values: 10/20GB means the 20GB is compressed. While that sounds kickass in terms of capacity, compressing is slower, and you need the space available on your drive because compressing copies the data first, then compresses.

Links (though none very recent):
http://www.macaddict.com/issues/0102...ravanfw20.html
http://www.macworld.com/2001/08/06/r.../tapestor.html
http://www.macworld.com/2001/02/28/r...irewiretd.html
http://www.macworld.com/2000/08/16/reviews/tape.html