Stephen Carpenter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: | I have had one too many hardware failures which resulted in me | "Loosing everything" lately, and as such would like to get a Tape drive | I have been told that with linux "most IDE Tape drives and All SCSI | tape dirves will work" | I have had a secret desire (ok..not so secret) to start using SCSI on my | | home system for some time now.... | I found I can get a 4 gig tape drive (uncompressed...uses Travan TR4 | tapes) | for about $200 | it is a Seagate T*Stor 8000 Internal SCSI (model sgt8000iS) | Does anyone kno wmuch about this drive? how much troubl eam I looking | at? | I already know I will have to recompile my kernel (I ALWAYS use a custom | | built kernel and my current one had SCSI suport turned off completely) | I will also need a SCSI controller card... | I got (for free) a SCSI controller... | somone bought an internal SCSI Zip drive here at work but already | had a SCSI card so they gave me the new one from the Zip drive... | is this controller worth bothering with or should I spend the $$ to get | a better | one? | I am looking for any recommendations (I am tired of buying hardware and | having it break and not work so easily....so this time im not going to | "Impulse Buy" my computer hardware)
I can't speak specifically about a Travan drive, but, in general, can say that the disadvantages of Travan drives is the media price. A travan TR4 tape goes for about $24 minimum. In contrast a 4mm/90m DAT tape costs about $4 and an 8mm/112m about the same. This may not be an issue for a home PC where you can get by with a handful of tapes, but it's something to consider. The disadvantage of 8mm and 4mm is of course that the drive prices are much higher, the cheapest 4mm running about $485. The other thing to remember is to get a couple of cleaning tapes, whatever drive you end up purchasing. As to using SCSI tape drives, I can say that my "ancient" 4mm WangDAT 6130HS, attached to an Adaptec 1542B, has worked flawlessly for about 3 years (and two computers) under Linux, and I can say that the drive has saved me a lot of heartache. It's probably the best hardware purchase I ever made. Good Luck! Gary -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]