Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!munnari.oz.au!brolga!groucho!grl From: grl@brb.dmt.csiro.au (Greg Lehmann) Newsgroups: comp.periphs.scsi Subject: DAT drives and tape sizes Summary: Anybody seen 180min (300ft) DAT tapes? Keywords: HP compression capacity Message-ID: Date: 10 Dec 90 23:53:58 GMT Sender: news@brolga.cc.uq.oz.au Organization: Prentice Computer Centre, The University of Queensland, Australia. Lines: 16 Nntp-Posting-Host: groucho.brb.dmt.csiro.au HP recently announced a tape drive capable of handling tapes 50% longer. I guess this means 300ft in length. This sort of implies that their ordinary drives can't handle the longer tapes. Maybe it also implies that my drive (GIGAtrend) also won't handle the longer length. Anybody got any ideas on this? Also does anybody besides HP make these 180 min tapes. If I could get my hands on one I could try it out for myself. Apparently GIGAtrend are going to offer a compression upgrade to their existing units which also promises to expand the capacity of my backup medium. Longer tapes would mean I would get between 3GB and 6GB per tape. At present I only get about 1GB. Longer tapes would make this 1.5GB and the compression gives you somewhere between a 2-fold and 4-fold increase. -- Greg Lehmann, CSIRO Division of Manufacturing Technology, Telephone: +61 7 377 3877 c/- Dept. of Mining & Metallurgical Eng., Facsimile: +61 7 371 4461 The University of Queensland, QLD 4072. Internet: grl@brb.dmt.csiro.au