Also Sprach Matteo Centonza:
> we bought an SLR 100 last year (at that time this drive was quite
> expensive, well above 3K$).
>
I don't think it was ever quite that high in the States, perhaps
around $2.5K US. Probably a result of open markets and exchange rates.
> I confirm, 4.5--5 Mb/s (factory declares up to 18 Gb/hr)
>
Is this with the tape drive compression on?
>
> > But what's the capacity of the linear tape autoloaders? 15 slot/2 drive
> > 8mm autoloaders fit in a 4U rackmount. And is the 5MB/s with or
> > without compression?
>
> AFAIK, up to 4Tb using their autoloader.
>
Just to compare in the same configs: the Tandberg SLR100 4U rack mount
autoloader contains 1 drive and 8 cartridges giving it a native capacity
of 400GB. The 8mm 4U autoloaders (AIT, Mammoth, Ecrix) can accomodate
2 drives and 15 slots. With ~35GB tapes that's 525GB. So 8mm still
does better in terms of sheer storage density. LTO and SuperDLT still
rule the upper midrange with 100GB native/cartridge capacities, though
Mammoth-2 is close at 60GB and AIT-3 should ship soon.
However with IBM's pixie dust and other improvements in hard disk technology,
we're looking at 300-400GB in a single 3.5" half-height drive within
the next couple of years. Even a SuperDLT autoloader will start
getting stressed. I really hope that someone comes up with a viable affordable
r/w optical tape format soon or that the cost of SAN/NAS RAID plummets
drastically.
--
C. Chan < [EMAIL PROTECTED] >
Finger [EMAIL PROTECTED] for PGP public key.
