SCSI PCI card for Tape Drive

[AndyinNYC]

I have a STD224000N (Seagate 12/24 GB SCSI-2 tape drive).

It's presently in a DELL PowerEdge 2300 server which has the SCSI connections on the motherboard.

Could someone tell me what (cheap) interface card I can buy to drop it into a Linux machine to back up certain directories?

Thanks in advance,

Andrew

 

[mpilchfamily]

SCSI card are not cheap.

If you want to back things up you'll be better of with an external HDD.

 

[AndyinNYC]

Thanks for your reply, but ...


I believe that I can use the Adaptec AHA-2940UW (need help here though).

This card is available via pricewatch.com for $16 w/free shipping.

I've used this card long ago, so if it is the right 'version' of SCSI then it really isn't expensive.

I just need to know which version is the right one.

Any other thoughts?

Andrew

 

[mpilchfamily]

Go tape if you want. But it will be slower then a USB/Fire wire/eSATA drive. Yes the SCSI interface was a very fast interface but the tape drive itself is what is slow. But you probably already know that.

So go ahead and get the card off paypal. If its from a reputable site. Otehrwise you have no way of knowing if its in working order. Wouldn't know if its the right version or not but i don't think you would have any problems.

 

[Zepper]

Well, you know the drive is SCSI-2 and the specs of the card are on the Adaptec Web site... The 2940U has 50-pin connector, the 2940UW has 68-pin. The UW will work with your drive, but you'll need a 50 to 68 pin adapter for the drive end (assuming the drive has a 50-pin connector).

I'd also prefer an external HD for backup anymore. Most tape is as dead as floppy drives. Backups are no good if they don't get done, anything that slows the process increases the chance they won't be done...

scsifaq.org has a lot of basic SCSI info. Perhaps since you seem not to already know what UW means, then perhaps SCSI isn't something to get involved with at this time.

And who knows how much data you need to back up. Have you considered how much a tape costs relative to good sized hard drives? And new tape sets (you'll want more than one set for best reliability) will be an annual expense, while you should get a good three years out of a top brand hard drive. I think if you thoroughly examine all the costs involved with SCSI tape, you'll find it comes out way higher than with an external HDD (even though you may be getting the tape drive for free - which I'm guessing is the only reason that the SCSI adventure came up anyway). Be aware that the compressed capacity of a tape (24GB max for this drive) is hardly ever achieved in the real world so you may get only 18GB per tape max. Totally impractical for backing up any modern sized hard drive...

Really consider all the angles and consequences before spending any money on this already obsolete tape format.

.bh.

 

[AndyinNYC]

Well,

The machine in question has a 4TB RAID 5 array on it. Clearly this tape drive isn't going to back up the entire array <g>.

I already have backup for the array to a second, slightly smaller, RAID 5 array along with external USB/Firewire drives - the machine doesn't have e-SATA or I'd probably use that too.

The plan was to use this to play around with - I already have the tape drive and 8 boxes of tapes (2 boxes new and unused). For $20 or less for a SCSI card, it's a learning exercise.

Additionally, the AHA-2940UW has both a 50 and 68 pin internal connector. It's just been so long since I've looked at anything SCSI that I've dumped all of that memory to make space for the brain-cells-killed-by-alcohol-and-old-age problem.

And yes, I know that UW mean ultra-wide, but that still doesn't mean anything to me 12 years after I last looked at this tape drive running in a machine.

Andrew

 

[mpilchfamily]

Kewl. Its great to have a learning experience. But tape drives are dead and most if not all industries have dropped tape as a backup solution. Especially since HDDs are so cheap now days. Besides HDDs last longer then tape.

Now i know thats not what you want to hear. So go ahead and get the card and any adapters you need and go for it. Have fun.

 

[SoulAssassin]

Originally posted by: Zepper
Most tape is as dead as floppy drives.

lol...I move >10TB a day to the LTO4 drives we have...1.6TB per tape. Tape will never die, it's the cheapest form of storage...you just need a drive from this millenium.

 

[SoulAssassin]

Originally posted by: mpilchfamily
Kewl. Its great to have a learning experience. But tape drives are dead and most if not all industries have dropped tape as a backup solution. Especially since HDDs are so cheap now days. Besides HDDs last longer then tape.

WTF are you talking about? VTLs are growing every day and they certainly have their place but no one is predicting the death of tape. It is, and will be for a long time, the cheapest form of storage. The life of an LTO4 tape is literally thousands of end to end writes (5k off the top of my head) and has a life of 30 years. Seen many hard drives from 1979 around lately?

If you are doing your backups to a straight hard drive and that meets your requirements then rock on but grow up and get out of the small business and into the enterprise one of these days. Join a company with 7 year data retention and see what backups to a hard drive will cost you in hardware and management. Your comment is flat out wrong.