Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ucsd!ames!pacbell!rtech!llama!fredb
From: fredb@llama.rtech.UUCP (Fred Buechler)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Disaster with a tape drive...HELP!!!
Message-ID: <3566@rtech.rtech.com>
Date: 7 Sep 89 16:06:29 GMT
References: <1989Aug31.104848.11605@cs.dal.ca>
Sender: news@rtech.rtech.com
Reply-To: fredb@llama.UUCP (Fred Buechler)
Distribution: comp
Organization: Relational Technology, Inc. Alameda, CA
Lines: 41

In article <1989Aug31.104848.11605@cs.dal.ca> lane@cs.dal.ca (John Wright/Dr. Pat Lane) writes:
>
>3.  Is this typical for this kind of tape drive?  To crap out so miserably
>after two measley years (of very little use) does not impress me for great
>reliability.  As well, this drive struck me as ponderously slow.  Every
>time you turned around it would "retension" the tape, winding it back and
>forth from one end to the other for about two minutes while you twiddled
>your thumbs.  A very frustrating piece of machinery.  Are they all like
>this?  Recommendations for better systems?
>
>4.  Should we have expected better from Alloy.  Their drive dies after a
>couple of years (admittedly past the warranty), they soak us for another
>wad of $$$, and then say "well, too bad about the old tapes; new ones
>should be ok" (for how long, I wonder).  This experience does not inspire
>me to say nice things about this company.  How about you?
>
>Please mail me with any suggestions you may have for my friends' perdicament.
>They are desperate!
>

I've got no suggestions for what you can do, but I am *very* interested in
whatever advice other people may have mailed you. I have the Alloy 
Retriever/40 and have had problems with it. I've had backups that I couldn't
restore and tapes that I couldn't add another backup session on. The most
distressing (and consistent) problem is that I have to format each tape before
I use it. If I don't, it gets partially through the backup and reports a bad
sector/sector not found error. There is no recovery from this. You just have
to start over. After restarting 3 or 4 times, the bad sector count (in the
tape statistics) is seriously high. Then I format the tape. Very few bad
sectors, the backup and verify run just fine. I DO NOT trust this backup
system at all! 

I called the dealer and they just ran the diagnostics that came with the
backup software. It always passes the diagnostics with no problem, the 
dealer says it must be a bad tape, etc. I called Alloy and they said to
call the dealer. I'm not very happy and I haven't had much time to fool
around with the thing or do anything else about solving the problems.

Fred Buechler
Concord, Ca
Work: (415) 748-2439