Hi Pedro -- > I need to buy and install an 8mm tape system for our debian systems. > If you happen to have one up and running, could you drop me a note > telling me things like: > > - Tape system brand name,
I have an Exabyte 8505. > - Connection type (serial/parallel port, internal, etc.), SCSI. > - Software used to access the tape (I only see something called > "taper" in the debian distribution), tob is also in the distribution; it is superior to taper in these ways: whereas taper uses direct ioctl calls, tob is a shell script that uses well-known and well-tested device I/O programs such as cpio, afio, and/or (depending on the users' choice) tar. I belive that tob is also much easier to set up; the documentation is far superior. > - Any other info that could guide me. I think an Exabyte is way too expensive, slow, and inconvenient for what it does nowadays. Also at the present, I am currently having trouble obtaining its rated capacity (5 GBytes); I can't seem to get more than 1.5 GBytes onto it. Exabytes are also not competitive on a cost/MB basis with Jaz drives, which are now down to $400 for the drive plus $95 for each 1 GB platter (at least that's what they cost a couple of weeks ago), and are MUCH faster. If I needed a lot of storage space, I'd look into the DEC cartridges (DLT drives?) that hold about 40 GBytes. My understanding is that Seagate will be coming out with a very large capacity device like these for well under $500 this Fall. HTH, Susan Kleinmann
