[ILUG] backup options...

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Niall O Broin (niall at linux.ie):

> Ultrium (as previously mentioned) has 100GB native capacity, drive
> costs $3000 (best price on pricewatch, so you'll probably pay somewhat
> more) and cartridges are $85 + - claims to backup 108GB per hour which
> is of course with mythical compression of 2:1 so actually claim is
> 54GB / hour which is 15 Mbyte/second which is pretty nippy :-) I read
> on review of this which said that the speed claim is not marketing
> bullshit and that it is actually very fast.

LTO ("Ultrium") is pretty damned good.  For those who can afford the
price of admission.  <sigh>  In its class, you have SDLT and damned
little else.

One point of comparison is of course helical scan vs linear vs. other.
As noted previously, helical scan wears tapes and heads rapidly.

Media type  Head type          Nom. capacity  Nom. speed  Vendors
8mm         helical scan       2GB/5GB        500kB/s     Exabyte, Tandberg
"AME" 8mm   helical scan       20-60GB[1]     ?           Exabyte 
DLT3XL      linear serpentine  15GB           1.5MB/s     DEC, Quantum
DLT4        linear serpentine  20-40GB        3-5MB/s     Quantum, others?
SDLT        linear serpentine  110GB          6MB/s       Quantum
DDS2        helical scan       2GB/4GB        500kB/s     HP and others
DDS3        helical scan       12GB           1.5MB/s     HP and others
DDS4        helical scan       20GB           3MB/s       Various
DLT7000     linear serpentine  35GB           5MB/s       Quantum
AIT         helical scan       25-50GB        6MB/s[2]    Sony
LTO         linear serpentine  100GB          15MB/s      IBM, Seagate

Also relevant:  Cost of tapes, cost of drives, cost of replacement
heads, service life....


[1] When used in M2-type drives.  M1 does 2.5-20GB.

[2] That's with AIT2 drives.  AIT3 drives do 12MB/s, with 100GB capacity.

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