Here's how I personally chose which tape drive to go with:
The way I figure, in order, the most important factors regarding
the tape backup system are:
1. Reliability
2. Performance
3. Ease
4. Cost
Some of these items will be in different order for other people but
I think that reliability
* DAT Tape drive - DDS3 or DDS4 attached to a PowerMac 7300,
probably Sony (or LaCie which I think uses a Sony mechanism), no
particular reason to go with Sony.
* Retrospect 4.3 with clients on each of the Macs.
I've had a lot of problems with the Tape changer put out by Sony.
The one I have
Below is my log file from Retro 4.3 running on a B/W G3 OS 9.0.4.
The client was an iMac OS 9.0.4. I assumed that it was because the
user left it without quitting Word and Eudora. When the client quit
out of these 2 applications 2 nights later backup proceded as
planned. I had this happen