Retrospect, Ecrix VXA Drive 33/66, Adaptec 2906 PCI SCSI card Blue G3

2000-12-10 Thread Rob Findlay 

Retrospect, Ecrix VXA Drive 33/66, Adaptec 2906 PCI SCSI card on Blue G3

I have (almost) decided to recommend the above combination to a client as an
economical yet professional backup solution but I have a tiny misgiving
about the VXA drive working out of the box with the Adaptec card 
Retrospect. I'm not sure if the 2906 is called a 2906 anywhere except
Australia but it is the entry level Adaptec PCI SCSI card. No bells 
whistles. I would very much appreciate any feedback anyone has as to whether
there are any known issues yet with the VXA  any of the other components I
have chosen. If you just don't like this combination for any other reason
then I'm keen to hear that too. The Blue G3 will be used as the backup
server for a network of 4 machines, 2 beige desktop G3's, 1 imac  the B/W.
Total of approximately 70 - 80 Megs total data for a full backup of all
machines  attached external drives. 10 Megabit ethernet.
TIA for taking the time to respond

***
Rob Findlay
Mactherapy
Solutions  support for
Macintosh Computers
http://www.mactherapy.com
***



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Re: Retrospect, Ecrix VXA Drive 33/66, Adaptec 2906 PCI SCSI card Blue G3

2000-12-10 Thread David Weeks, weeks.de 


On Son, 10. Dez 2000, 16:42:15 Uhr GMT Rob Findlay wrote:


   Retrospect, Ecrix VXA Drive 33/66, Adaptec 2906 PCI SCSI card on
Blue G3

We've been using this combination for approx. 3 months but in a 9500
with an XLR8, G3/400 board.
We initially had a few problems, but they were quickly solved with the
help of Dantz and the members of this list. Essentially the problems
were solved by using a high quality SCSI cable with no adapters, and by
having the drive as the only device on the bus. A further problem that
appeared at the same time was that the drive sometimes lost the
connection to a client, could not resolve the situation and would then
time-out. This coincided with our updating to Retrospect 4.3 and was
eventually solved by switching off "use software compression" even
though the drive should have been overriding it anyway. 
Since then the setup has run very reliably.
Incidentally our drive is the LVD version, which made finding the
correct cable rather difficult.

Best regards,

David Weeks


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Re: Retrospect, Ecrix VXA Drive 33/66, Adaptec 2906 PCI SCSI card Blue G3

2000-12-10 Thread Val Junker 

There are a few of quick things I would add about the VXA drives, having placed them 
with
several clients in a number of different configurations with great success overall. 
(One
example that has worked very nicely uses 2 VXA drives on a Beige G3 to back up PCs to 
one
drive and Macs to the other drive.) I have used both the LVD and SCSI-2 versions of the
drives, singly as well as in pairs.

I strongly recommend using an Adaptec 2930U card and not the 2906; devices attached 
through
a 2906 can't be seen without the Adaptec extension being loaded first, while the 2930U
requires no extension to be operable, which is much preferred in my book. The price is 
only
slightly higher than the 2906. Its exact name is "Power Domain 2930U Ultra Narrow SCSI 
PCI"
card, referred to on bottom of page found at...
http://www.ecrix.com/products/VXA-1-apple-desc.html

100Base-T ethernet makes a huge difference. You will never ever see what these drives 
really
do at 10. I've gotten rates of 180 gigs a minute over switched 100 networks. With 
10Base-T
you get a paltry fraction of the that. When backing up a local machine 200GB a minute 
is the
norm.

At the time of this writing, the URL below still worked to bring you to the page at the
Ecrix site which enables you to take advantage of a terrific eval offer from them 
where the
drive is some $500 (US) off. Your client will love you for it if its still available 
and
they don't already know about the deal.
http://www.vxa.com/eval/

For your convenience, I am including below the exact shopping list I provide a client 
who is
getting the SCSI-2 version of the drive. (Of course they have to already have or get
Retrospect too.) I hope some of this is helpful to you.

Val Junker
---

1) PN = 115.00108... VXA External Drive Kit, Translucent =
"SCSI-2 tape drive in external enclosure with power supply and cooling fan, power 
cord, SCSI
terminator, Documentation  Tools CD-Rom, QuickStart Guide, V17 VXAtape (33 GB), VXA
Cleaning Tape. Available in choice of black, white, red, or translucent enclosure."
[This next URL is just for you to see the whole undiscounted price list]
http://www.vxa.com/products/VXA-price.html

2) Buy extra tapes (the drive comes with 1 "V17" tape)...
Get THREE more "V17" tapes, and also buy TWO "V10" tapes for some special purpose 
archiving
(shorter tapes)

3) Buy a "SCSI-2 50 pin" cable to connect drive to Mac, as referred to
on bottom of page found at...
http://www.vxa.com/products/VXA-kit.html

Not available from them (Ecrix), but needed:

4) Adaptec "Power Domain 2930U Ultra Narrow SCSI PCI" card
Referred to on bottom of page found at...
http://www.ecrix.com/products/VXA-1-apple-desc.html

---



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