Help with 8mm Tape Drives.. quick Questions..

[Santa]

I have some 8mm 112mm tapes that are used in a Exabyte 8205. I do belieave this drive does about 2.5gigs/5.0gigs compressed on one of these tapes. The Exabyte 8505 supposidly uses the same 112 8mm tapes and can do 5gig/10gig compressed off this same tape?? Is this a mistake or would the Exabyte 8505 only be able to fit 2.5gig/5gig on one of these 112 tapes?

Also..
The reason I ask is I might be upgrading my Tape Backup with a differnt cheaper drive and need to know if getting differnt higher capacity drive will work with the current tapes I have. I'd hate to get rid of 20+ brand new 112mm tapes that I have and would perhaps think about getting the same drive if I can't.

Any recommendations of a Tape drive that uses 112 to their max if its more than 2.5gig would be helpful too.

 

[The Stigenator]

man, I just set up a server with an Exabyte and DLT Drives.

From what I see, atleast our model of Exabyte does 2/4GB. It uses the 112mm tapes.
THe DLT ofcourse uses a different tape.. and is a lot faster.

 

[Santa]

Yea this thing isn't the fastest drive in the world but it can usually do a 1gig in under a half hour for me and being that its a personal backup I usually set it to run overnight. If the Exabyte 8505 can use the same tapes but do more I might get one of those. Anyone know if this is the case?

 

[CinderElmo]

Go here:

http://www.exabyte.com/home/suppserv.html

then go to "8mm and 4mm tape drives FAQ".

Your answer will be there.

Good Luck!

 

[Santa]

thanks CinderElmo.
I really didn't check that site out throughly enough before.
Found out that it really depends on how the Drive formats the tape.
So if I were to upgrade to the 8505 I could squeeze out an extra 5gig compresseed out of the tape for a total of 10gig compressed. Thats pretty kewl. These drives are discontinued and I should be able to get them cheap.

I found out I needed to get some cleaning tapes and cleaned the drive today and its working for now till I find a cheap 8505 model or better.

thanks for the help everyone