Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!voder!tolerant!bruce
From: bruce@tolerant.UUCP (Bruce Hochuli)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Disaster with a tape drive...HELP!!!
Keywords: tape backup systems
Message-ID: <5838@tolerant.UUCP>
Date: 11 Sep 89 21:18:25 GMT
References: <1989Aug31.104848.11605@cs.dal.ca> <3566@rtech.rtech.com> <517@uncmed.med.unc.edu>
Reply-To: bruce@handel.Tolerant.COM.UUCP (Bruce Hochuli)
Distribution: comp
Organization: Tolerant Software Inc., San Jose CA
Lines: 35

In article <517@uncmed.med.unc.edu> theroo@uncmed.med.unc.edu (Bron D. Skinner Ph.D.) writes:
>
>I would be interested in how others are handling this issue.  
>Are there reliable units?  Does reliability get better on higher capacity
>tape backup systems (60MB plus)?  Are there alternatives which are about
>equal in cost, but which yield better reliability?
>

I have set up three systems using the Teac 60MB tape with the
Everex controller. Two of the systems alternated between XENIX
and DOS and one was DOS only.

No reliability problems of any kind.

The speed of the tape backup is limited by the speed of your system.
One of the systems was the Everex Step 20 (20mhz 386 with smooth
cache) and it could do the whole backup while streaming. I was also
using the windows disk caching software. The backup took about 15
minutes for about 40 mb. This was lovely.

The other systems (16Mhz NEC 386 no cache, generic 286 8Mhz clone)
were a lot slower. One had to walk away or in XENIX do it in
the background. 

The Everex software looks like it was written by a guy who had
never done a user interface and had just discovered color. It uses
every color it can find, really ugly. But it works. The other
minor annoyance is that the only was to get to the tape is through
the Everex software, no drivers for DOS.

There is a XENIX driver for the 286 version and the last time I
checked (about a year ago), no driver for the 386 XENIX. I was
running 286 XENIX on my 386 NEC at the time and I was waiting 
for the new XENIX which was supposed to support these tapes
directly.