A good tape drive?

[Evgeny]

Could anyone recommend a good tape drive for a home user? I'm looking for something with 8+ GB uncompressed capacity, SCSI interface. And I don't want an OnStream ECHO drive either, I'd like to use a proper backup program with my drive, like BackupExec.

Thanks for your help!

Evgeny

 

[esung]

DDS-3 tapes could store 12GB uncompressed.. and those drives are pretty much all SCSI interfaced.. Sony, Seagate, HP...

 

[LIBERTYorDEATH]

SEAGATE TECHNOLOGY
20GB TapeStor Travan 20 Internal SCSI-2
$299




click here for the specs on the Seagate 20gb



"Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA - ordinary citizens don't need guns, as their having guns doesn't serve the State." Heinrich Himmler

Still support gun control now?

 

[Evgeny]

Thanks for your help guys. Travan might be the go, but I was just wondering if anyone actually had good/bad experiences with those drives. I've used DDS-3/DDS-4 drives and they're great, but a bit too expensive for me!

Evgeny

 

[LIBERTYorDEATH]

The reason I recommended the seagate travan line is because its what i use myself at home. I have never had a tape failure, write error, read error, glitch yet. Best of all, Veritas back-up exec is 101% compatible with every feature of the drive since Veritas simply purchased the software unit of seagate last year. The travan tapes run about 25 dollars online, and have a 200-250 time write erase life with no data loss .

 

[Evgeny]

I had a look at Seagate's range of Travan tape drives there are 4 10/20GB, SCSI-2 drives which seem very similar except for the price. Am I right in that the only difference between them is the software bundle? Also, two of them have "Hardware Compression". Does that mean that the others don't have compression at all? Or just that the drive "asks" the host CPU to compress the data for it?

Thanks again!

Evgeny

 

[LIBERTYorDEATH]

Yeah, the ones with NS in the model name have hardware compression..this just means the tape drive does all the checksum work instead of having the computers cpu do it during the compression/expansion of the data. that is why they are more expensive. I am not sure about the distinction from a tapestore and a hornet. I think its just the difference between oem and boxed processors, with the tapstor being the "boxed" and hornet being the "oem". I already had veritas backupexec so i just went with the hornet and saved 30 bucks.

 

[willawake]

HP DDS-3 DAT24 is the only one i can recommend. tried many solutions - travan, iomega max (something) the DDS-3 is the only reliable and VERY FAST one. not really for home users. Just
get another hard disk for backup.