How large are your backup needs?

4mm - small backups
8mm - med.  backups
DLT - large backups

(Or 3494 for VERY large systems -- ADSM/Adstar/TSM.)

4mm, unfortunately, has issues.  I've seen instances where the tape
stretched, got stuck in the drive, the drive got misaligned or dirty,
the drive broke, etc.  I'd really only recommend this for home and SOHO
use, and only if you can afford down time.  This is NOT a data
center/enterprise solution at all.  4mm is cheap, and "cheap" is the
operative word.  Again, at home, it's OK.  I guess any tape backup is
better than none at all, but the only time you ever need to restore is
when it's critical....  :-(

I'd recommend 8mm for fewer problems.  4mm obviously stores more easily,
but 8mm holds more data.  It is definitely recommended for small to
medium-sized business needs.  The tape is thicker and wider, so
stretching is not a big issue.  I think it's the best bang for the buck
for most needs, unless you need to scale things up a bit.  If so, try
DLT or 3494.

DLT is recommended for production-level backups.  The tapes are more
rugged and are basically sealed from the elements better.  You can also
store more data per tape, and I think they're far faster.

3494/Adstar i$ for really big $tuff, $uch as a large data center.  It'$
expen$ive and can be very fa$t, if $etup correctly.  You can ea$ily
dedicate $taff member$ to a $olution like thi$!  We do here at $print.
Expect the price to $tart around $100K.

You can get jukeboxes/tape loaders for each of the above, which can add
considerable cost and complexity.

-----Original Message-----
From: bradmiller [mailto:bradmiller@dslonramp.com]
Sent: Thursday, March 30, 2000 12:16 PM
To: kclug
Cc: bradmiller
Subject: kclug - What tape drive would you recommend?

I'm looking for a tape drive to do backups on my Linux box for it and my
network.  What drive would you recommend?  I'm just going to be backing
up
the data -- if anything blows chunks it'll get restarted from scratch.

-- Bradley Miller