exabyte tape unit

From: Richard Erlacher <richard_at_idcomm.com>
Date: Mon May 22 00:23:21 2000

Actually, these drives produce nominally 10GB capacity on a 112 meter tape
unless you turn off the "hardware" compression. The ability to do this is
is necessary in order to maintain compatibility with the "standard" 8mm
tapes produced by the EXB8200 drives which were very popular at one time.
If your drive has a beige front with a grey knurled-finish button on the
front, it's likely it's an 8505XL, which takes 160-meter tapes on which it
yields nominally 15 MB of capacity.

I harbor no ill will toward Sony or Exabyte for makeing the drive reject the
garden variety video handycam cartridges, though I'm not sure anyone ever
did anything specific to make the cheaper/utility grade handycam cartridges
useable. The data-grade tapes only cost about 4 bucks for a 112-meter tape
that yields about 10 GB of storage. I've got a Travan (1/4" cartridge) tape
drive for which the 1 GB tapes cost $40 last time I bought one. I bought
the drive at the request of a client. I got that drive back when I was
looking for a cardboard box to put a few things in . . . in his dumpster. I
can't say I didn't warn him. I've got 8-year-old backup sets that have
never faltered, though I routinely do a full backup of EVERYTHING every day.
That's the nice thing about having a backup device with sufficient capacity
on a single element of its media that it allows a complete backup without
anyone having to change the cartridge. That way a backup happens as
scheduled, regardless of whether I remember or forget. If I do happen to
forget to change the cartridge in the morning, the backup set is
overwritten, which is not ideal, but it definitely gets done. It takes a
long time, but from NT, via fast ethernet, the job takes only a little time,
usually early in the morning, and is fully automatic so I don't have to
strain my fading grey cells.

Dick








----- Original Message -----
From: Eric Smith <eric_at_brouhaha.com>
To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Sunday, May 21, 2000 5:25 PM
Subject: Re: exabyte tape unit


> > I have a quick question: I just procured an exabyte EXB8505ST and was
> > wondering if any of you knew what tape it uses and what the capacity is
in
> > MB. Got this at a swap meet for the case, but if the drive is useable,
I'll
> > keep it together.
>
> Native 5G (on 120 meter tapes?). More with compression. Uses 8mm data
> tapes. Some 8mm video tapes (typically 112 meter?) have been known to
> work, but if you go that route, don't use cheap ones. It's rumored that
> Sony changed their 8mm tape formulation at some point to prevent their
> video tapes from working in Exabyte drives, since they wanted to sell
> higher-priced data-grade tapes.
>
> Personally, I use data grade tapes anyhow.
>
> In the "4mm" world (DAT & DDS), it astonishes me that most audiophiles
will
> only use DDS (data-grade) tape for recoding audio, because they don't want
> any dropouts, but many computer users try to use cheap audio-grade DAT
> tape for their data. I guess that shows who values their recordings more.
>
> And yes, I've personally verified that the error rates on DDS tapes from
> the major manufacturers are in fact lower than the error rates on the same
> manufacturer's audio DAT tapes. Whether that's true of 8mm tapes as well,
> I don't know, as I haven't done any comparisons.
>
> > Respond off-list to keep the clutter down.
>
> Nope.
>
Received on Mon May 22 2000 - 00:23:21 BST