Well, that settles that. Thanks!
The unfortunate thing is that a "hole" is opening in the tape backup
concept with all these super high capacity drives. A reasonably stable
system (which mine can be for a year at a stretch) may only require a
handful of full backups a year IF differential backups are run frequently.
And while the full backups may eat gigabytes of tape, my differential
backups rarely use more than 500 megabytes. That's too much for convenient
use of LS-120 diskettes, but way too little for efficient use of these
large capacity tapes. I still use QIC-3020's for differential backups when
possible.
So for me, for the next 3 or 4 years, it makes more sense to use multiple
TR-3 tapes per full backup on an older drive, than it does to buy a new
super high capacity drive. As I said, I'll hit the auctions ...
Thanks again. You covered ALL the bases.
Jim
At 12:27 PM 04/05/2000 -0700, Tim Jones wrote:
>Jim Rankin wrote:
>
>> I intend to query Colorado/Travan to see if there's
>> any hope that reformatting an older tape, such as a
>> TR-3, on any of their larger new drives, will allow
>> write access to the tape. If I get any positive
>> solutions, I'll feed them back here. If anyone else
>> has such info, please feed it in!
>
>I can respond to this directly. None of the drives will utilize, in any
>form, a TR-3 (QIC 3020) tape for any purpose besides reading. And even
>then, it's a function of the company's dedicated software.
>
>We have direct partnerships with HP/Colorado, Sony, Tecmar (now owns
>Ditto and is part of Overland Data), OnStream, Seagate, and Tandberg.
>We are also very familiar with the deceased technologies in the Travan
>realm from Archive, Mountain, Exabyte, and Aiwa.
>
>When a tape holds 3GB and a harddisk holds 13GB, tape vendors have to
>work very hard to keep up. As such, old technologies (in the lower
>price ranges) are often abandoned and orphaned. However, by utilizing
>what the market refers to as "real" tape technology (DAT, SLR, DLT, AIT,
>Mammoth), growth potential remains valid because the mechanisms were
>designed from the start for expansion and compatibility down the road.
>It's not possible to engineer a low cost drive with these qualifications
>in mind.
>
>--
>Tim Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Vice President http://www.estinc.com/
>Enhanced Software Technologies, Inc. (602) 470-1115
> "The BRU Guys"
>
>
