FW: Tape backup solutions

From:  Harold Mayes
Sent:  Wednesday, May 20, 1998 3:00 PM
To:  Bill Megenity
Subject:  RE: Tape backup solutions

Bill:

Send this on please.

We have a similar tape drive from Exabyte (this technology is called   
"Mammoth").   Whenever we load software from a vendor from the low   
density 8 mm tapes, we have always had to clean the drive before we could   
use our mammoth tapes.

I had talked to several vendors and to Exabyte about this problem.  The   
reason this occurs is that the mammoth tapes have a lubricant which   
allows the tape to run faster and compresses data better.  The low   
density tapes do not have a lubricant and generate flakes which can cause   
wear on the tape head.

The solution to all of this is to do the following:
  1). Keep the current 8mm drive and use it with an IBM 2621 card to   
handle any low density tapes.
  2). Use a mammoth drive with an IBM 6501 card to handle the high   
density tapes.

We currently backup our entire system on Saturday night (approxmatly 35   
GB.).  This process took about 6 hours.  We changed one parameter and   
reduced the time to about 5 hours.  I estimate that when we install the   
6501 card, we will see that backup drop to under 2 hours.

Harold Mayes
haroldmayes@ruskin.com

From:  npalmer@NxTrend.com
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------  
 --
Kevin,

Although there are several IBM drives that could be recommended, I'll   
make a couple of assumptions here:
(snip)


+---
| This is the Midrange System Mailing List!
| To submit a new message, send your mail to MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com.
| To unsubscribe from this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-UNSUB@midrange.com.
| Questions should be directed to the list owner/operator: david@midrange.com
+---