What's the point of a DUAL DLT DRIVE autoloader?

[Kwad Guy]

I just found myself with an Overland DLT 7210 autoloader. This
consists of TWO DLT 35/70 drives and a 10 DLT tape autoloader sled.

I understand the value of an autoloader. But I am not completely clear
of exactly how you use a DUAL DLT drive autoloader. What is the point?
Are backups striped across multiple DLT tapes (in which case they
can only be read back by the same configuration autoloader)? Or are
you expected to run multiple backups simultaneously? The specs
claim double the throughput of a single DLT drive for the dual model
(10MB/2 vs 5MB/s for uncompressed mode),
which is kind of specious if all it means is that
you can run two backup jobs simultaneously.

(Note that this is pretty much overkill for my system, but what
the hey--I'll have some fun. It was sold
by a volume salvage operation as a DLT 20/40 autoloader
with one DLT drive--
because there was one inventory sticker on the box describing
it that way. But there was another sticker on the box that \
correctly listed it as a 7210...Don't know how they missed that...
Sold as-is for $400 shipped...can't beat that...especially since
it's brand new...[Brag & Moan])

Kwad

 

[bgilly]

You have to have software that supports striping the backup to both drives. I believe BackupExec has an option called RAIDirector that lets you do this. Other than that, the advantage is to run different backups at the same time, or perform a format function while you're backing up on the other drive, etc. ie. I run our Unix backups to a separate backup set that our NT data, and since I have a library with 2 drives, they can run simultaneously if need be. I haven't used RAIDirector, but I'm very curious to see how it works and how the restoration process works.