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From: cmf851@anu.oz.au (Albert Langer)
Newsgroups: comp.periphs.scsi
Subject: Re: High Capacity Tapes: Exabyte or DAT?
Message-ID: <1991May22.095538.15140@newshost.anu.edu.au>
Date: 22 May 91 09:55:38 GMT
Article-I.D.: newshost.1991May22.095538.15140
References: <29543@hydra.gatech.EDU>
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In article <29543@hydra.gatech.EDU> ken@dali.cc.gatech.edu 
(Ken Seefried iii) writes:

>So I come to the net hoping someone has done the definative comparison
>of backup device technology and can lay down the pros and cons of
>each device, given that it will be used in a heavily networked, *very* 
>heterogenous environment, and needs to be able to work with a wide 
>variety of Unix machines (we have a habit of moving the things around).

I can't offer a comparison of the technology (and those I have read I
find no more convincing than those arguing for the superiority of VHS
or BETAmax video formats).

I went for DAT for the same reason I went for VHS as a videotape format
- because I thought other people who I will want to exchange tapes with
are more likely to end up with DAT.

The reason I think that is because DAT is based on a consumer audio
technique which has been held off the market in the USA and Australia
for spurious copyright reasons but is already popular in Japan and
can be expected to become popular in other countries too. When that
happens I would expect the cost of consumer audio DAT to plummet a
year or two after the initial "prestige" introduction and the cost
of scsi DAT to follow it downwards. Then with DAT dramatically
cheaper than Exabyte etc I would expect it to become the "standard"
on unix boxes, regardless of technical merit.

Only argument I can see against this reasoning is that there is now
a competing consumer audio digital audio tape format, I think called
DCC and I think based on cassettes the same physical shape as existing
audio cassettes (and with player/recorders designed to handle both).

If that format became dominant then the same argument would apply to it,
but as far as I know it isn't available for computer backup now anyway.

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