Need a ~50gig external tape backup solution (around $200)

[trend]

What are you'lls recommendations?

(I do have a symbolic logic 875XID, 2280x pci scsi adatper.. but cannot find a tape drive for it.. so I am looking at buying an additional tape drive)

thanks!
Lee

 

[CalvinHobbes]

A used DLT or AIT drive is about the best you can do in that price range. Is that card LVD/SE?

Why not use an external hard drive? You could get a few 250GB drives for $200.

 

[trend]

I do not know if it is LVD or SE How can I tell?


thanks
Lee

 

[Zepper]

"How do I tell?"

Look it up on the http://www.lsilogic.com web site.

.bh.

 

[trend]

I have looked on that website 3 or 4 times.. I cannot find my card on there :/

(I am sure I am wrong.. please help me )

 

[Zepper]

We're trying to help you - most of us have said that tape drives are NOT a good solution any more. You can buy a 40GB or larger hard drive for what they are charging for some of the blank tapes these days. If it needs to hook up to SCSI, Acard.com makes IDE to SCSI adapters for both SE and LVD SCSI host adapters.
. CDW.com has about the biggest selection of tape drives and I don't see much there for less than 4 or 500 bucks... As another said, you might be able to find a good used one but don't ask me where.
. Go find a SCSI thread that Peter has replied to and send him a PM. He's Mr. SCSI...

.bh.

On the card, you have to look on the card itself to find the model number. You can't just look in the Device Manager as that will give you just the family. the number will be 2280x where x will be another digit (e.g. LSI22800U, LSI22805, etc.) then you can look up your specific card on the LSI site.bh.

 

[Peter]

Even U2W or U160 LVD interface tape drives will happily run on an 875-based UW SE host adapter. SCSI is backward compatible both ways, and a 37 MB/s throughput ceiling certainly doesn't bother a tape drive of that capacity range.

Tape backups are still the technology of choice if you want reliable backups not just peace of mind - proper, safe backing up demands multiple media in rotation, which are regularly replaced, removed from the system when not actively being used, and even taken off site regularly for safety against fire, flooding, theft etc. Try that with hard disks - one hard bump and it's gone. Drop a tape, no problem.

 

[HDTVMan]

I agree hard drive backups are the way to go with 300GB drives going for $90.00. You will be much happier you did it with a hard drive.

WHY?
Because if your tape drive dies which happens a lot (I was a backup admin) then you need to replace that outdated or now expensive tape drive with another one to get to your data. Which that tape drive will probably fail again anyway. I used to laugh at the guys who bought those IOMEGA drives which held about as much data as a CD especially since they had a high failure rate and the poor saps had to buy another drive to get to their backup data.

Reason 2.
Most Tape drives are SSSLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOWWWWW! They dont provide the random access a hard drive can provide. Granted some can stream the data very fast but its still sequential not random access. You may not remember the days of cassette tapes vs the CD.

Reason 3.
30+ gig backups will be replaced hopefully next year with HD-DVD or BLUE RAY disc drives which will hopefully or eventually have cheap media.

 

[trend]

Originally posted by: Peter
Even U2W or U160 LVD interface tape drives will happily run on an 875-based UW SE host adapter. SCSI is backward compatible both ways, and a 37 MB/s throughput ceiling certainly doesn't bother a tape drive of that capacity range.

Tape backups are still the technology of choice if you want reliable backups not just peace of mind - proper, safe backing up demands multiple media in rotation, which are regularly replaced, removed from the system when not actively being used, and even taken off site regularly for safety against fire, flooding, theft etc. Try that with hard disks - one hard bump and it's gone. Drop a tape, no problem.

So I can pretty much get any tape drive I want? (as long as it has the same number of pins?)

 

[Peter]

What pins? You mean whether it's Narrow or Wide SCSI? Basically yes - granted you bring suitable cabling. At some point in the near future, you're going to have to have a physical look at your SCSI card ... or just pull it out, snap a photo, and post it here for us to figure out what you have there, and how this would fit your preferred tape drive solutions.

 

[trend]

I will swing by their office on monday and check it out,

thanks Peter!



Lee

 

[Zepper]

I have no problem rotating a set of hard drives with a mobile rack (interghangeable trays) in a 5.25" firewire external enclosure. You could use notebook drives if you need small - the 60G (raw - up to 120GB compressed) notebook drives are getting reasonable. But I'd still use 3.5" drives for the higher performance and lower cost. You'd thing it was a BFD... :roll:

. I found two LSI models LSI22801, LSI22802 - one of those should be it. They are Single Ended (that leaves LVD drives out) at up to 40MB/sec. There is also a DTC2280, but they have been out of business for so long I doubt that would be it. Anyway, this info was easily extrapolated from what you already had. That's why I hesitate to get involved with those that can't even come up with that much on thier own...

.bh.

 

[Peter]

Note that the driver doesn't figure out the /actual/ adapter name, since there are about three zillion different card designs using the 53C875 chip. It doesn't even have to be one of LSI's own card designs to show that name in Device Manager. (The background is that the 53C875 chip is pre-PCI 2.1, thus doesn't support the "subsystem ID" feature, and this in turn makes card identification genuinely impossible to the driver or any other software.)

Yes the 875 is a Single Ended host adapter chip, but the thing you're missing is that LVD drives do work on SE hosts absolutely fine - just like vice versa. Any LVD device must, by definition of the SCSI standard, be backward compatible to SE mode - for exactly this situation. Connect one SE device to an otherwise LVD capable setup, and everything on that chain will fall back to SE operation automatically. The host adapter has no special role in this - so if all your peripherals are LVD and your host adapter is SE, that'll work fine just as well.

 

[trend]

Got back from the office.. Here is some pictures of the card:
http://www.powerleaf.com/

This is from a Compaq proliant 1600 (PL 1600 61550 512 128ux)


The info on the LSI symbois chip is:
53c895
609-0393396
WJb52019
Y 9953

The IBM Chip:
IBM27-82353B
20H2952
03
1D08001PQ
Japan


My only concern is.. that there is a ribbon that looks like it goesfrom the top of the card down to the bottom of the computer.. and possibly hooks up a raid5 hd setup.. Not sure..

Is this enough information to know for certain what card I have and exacully what to get?

thanks guys for all the help! (SCSI is my weakest suite by far)


Lee

 

[Steve]

53c895? That sounds like it could be the LSI 8953U, or 8951U. Is either of those silkscreened on the card itself?

 

[trend]

I don't believe I see that on the card (I had to leave it at their office.. as it was hooked up to their hds I believe).. man, if there was info on the back of the card.. i will be sooo mad, as that is the only thing I neglected to write down/take a picture of :/

 

[Peter]

That is a Compaq designed, full blown RAID card - notice the AMD CPU, the Compaq proprietary chips, the pile of onboard RAM.
Are you sure the "875" SCSI channel you're seeing comes from this card? The card photo says "LVD/SE" on the SCSI connector, which is something the 875 chip definitely doesn't do. It's an 895 actually - and it's most probably not even exposed to the host system.
Go back, and look around in the system some more, and see if you can find a Symbios or LSI 53C875 chip.

 

[trend]

I believe there was a built in scsi controller on the motherboard... I know there was 2 scsi controllers, and the one i took the picture of was the only one that was plugged into the pci bus... So i assume the other was integrated to the motherboard?

I cannot go back and look again, I would rather just buy an inexpensive scsi card if I have to.


What do you think Peter?



thanks again guys!

Lee

 

[Peter]

I think you need to look at the controller you already have. There's little point in plugging another just because you can't be bothered figure the one out that's already there. Reading the machine's manual might also provide information on this.

 

[trend]

Yeah, i agree, except this is at a client's office.. I don't want to tell them, hey i need to come by for a 3rd time to look at your scsi card

 

[Peter]

Why not? Doing things right involves figuring out what needs to be done. As long as you don't bill them for your lack of persistence

 

[trend]

Why can I not hookup the tape drive to the scsi card I showed? (I see you pointed out it is a raid card, but does that make things different?)

thanks again

 

[Peter]

It's a RAID card. The SCSI controller chip isn't directly accessible from the host system - everything goes through the RAID controller engine formed by the Compaq logic and the AMD RISC CPU. This RAID engine very possibly won't care about anything but hard disk drives.

 

[trend]

Ok.. that sucks

Looks like it is time to buy an inexpensive scsi card for the tape drive I will buy.

A big benefit to me would also be .. i can test out implementation, before I try to set it up for them..

And since we are starting from scratch now :/

Do you have any suggestions for a scsi technology to use? (that would put total cost of card+cable+tape drive+ terminiator off ebay to around $200 or so)

thanks again Peter, You are the best!

 

[Peter]

HellooOOoo ... the additional 875 (down on the mainboard possibly) is there EXACTLY for the purpose of hooking non-HDD SCSI peripherals to this machine. It's the right level of SCSI technology for a tape drive of your target range.

If you want to test things out, buy a SCSI card for yourself, but then use the onboard chip in their system anyway.

LSI have made a series of budget SCSI adapters from their older chips - for example, there's the LSIU40SE. This is a dual channel adapter using the 876 chip, which is essentially the 875 doubled up. From $30.