Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!uw-beaver!cornell!vax5.cit.cornell.edu!gai
From: gai@vax5.cit.cornell.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Subject: Re: Tape backup units? what kinds?
Message-ID: <1991Jun27.233549.5793@vax5.cit.cornell.edu>
Date: 28 Jun 91 03:35:48 GMT
References: <91176.120724IO91461@MAINE.MAINE.EDU>
Distribution: comp
Organization: CIT, Cornell University
Lines: 66

In article <91176.120724IO91461@MAINE.MAINE.EDU>,
IO91461@MAINE.MAINE.EDU (Tom Nezwek) writes: 
> 
>       I'm looking for a Tapebackup unit to back up my Maxtor 340meg hd.
>  What kinds are available?  How much are they?  I noticed that GVP uses
>  a Wangtec.  Are these scsi units?  I saw wangtec tapebackups for $339
>  in the computer shopper.. Can they be just hooked up to the scsi bus and
>  then run by one of the tapestor-like programs on the fish disks?
> 
>                          -Tom

I too have a 340 MB Maxtor and recently went through the somewhat
painful process of putting together a tape back-up system.

For the actual physical tape drive I'm using a Wangtek 5099ES which
is a 60MB SCSI unit.  I sorta regret not getting a 150MB unit but
the drive works fine.  Speed seems to be in the 5MB/minute range
under optimal conditions.

I've got a GVP original Impact SCSI interface card recently updated
with GVPs FaaastROMs (v3.07).  This controller/ROM interface works
but not as well as I'd like... (see below)

My biggest problem was finding software.  I tried all of the PD
utilities available (tabu, BTN, tapedev, etc.) and didn't have
luck getting any of them working reliably with my system.  BTN 2.0
seemed to be the best of the lot and I _almost_ got it working
reliably.

Anyways I decided to go to commercial software.  Tried MRBackUp
professional from TTR development.  Looked good on paper since
it promised SCSI tape support, ARexx, etc.  However the SCSI
tape portion of their software is still very buggy at least
with my controller/tape/hard-drive set-up.  I've spent the
past month talking with TTR about various problems with their
SW and they have been very responsive in sending me updates and
keeping me informed but after over a month I still didn't have
a workable program so I decided to try something else.

A couple of days ago I got AmiBack.  This is a very polished
program and its SCSI tape support in general seems to be very
good but still has a couple of minor bugs.... for instance
afetr I insert the second destination tape for a back-up it 
apparently reverts to using a very small buffer size instead
of the buffer size I had set in the configuration screen.
(Any hints on how to work-around, avoid this or is there/
will there be an update?)

Also, I cannot do asynchronous backups - (i.e. read from drive
and write to tape at the same time)  Backups done in asynch
mode seem to be VERY fast (keep the tape streaming 99% of the
time from a fast hard-drive) but always lock up at some point.
The readme file on disk says that this is the fault of the
SCSI interface and I tend to believe it.  So, another
question - is anyone out there using AmiBack to do ASynch
back-ups to tape and if so what controller are you using?
(Does GVP Series II solve this?  What about TrumpCard Pro?)

Hope this summary of my experiences helps someone out there.

					- Chris
-- 
+---------------------------+
| Christopher A. Wolf       |    
| mlgy@vax5.cit.cornell.edu |  
+---------------------------+