Tape drives for Xenix

[Clif Flynt]

In article <1094 at bc-cis.UUCP> raanan at bc-cis.UUCP (Raanan Herrmann) writes:
>
>	Could anybody list the sources of tape-backup systems (hardware and
>software) for Xenix, prices and personal views?
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>Raanan Herrmann  (bc-cis!raanan, raanan at bc-cis.UUCP raanan at bklyncis.BITNET)


Where I work we are using Archive and Wangtek streaming 60 M drives.  I
don't know pricing, but I can offer opinions...

Both are supported by Xenix's mkdev tape driver installation package.
Both seem to read and write reliably and quickly.  60 Mbytes of system
files and data go to tape in about a half hour.

We've used tar and cpio with both these drives.  The backup times for 
the systems comes out almost identical, with cpio -B taking a bit
longer than tar.  I suspect that SCO modified tar to buffer something
like 8 K of data before writing to tape, but that's sheer guess.

Of the two drives, I like the Wangtek a bit more.  I find it easier to
get the tapes in and out, and it doesn't sound quite so unhappy when
it moves the heads.

That's pretty minor differences, but from where I sit the drives behave
nearly identical.


On my own system at home, I have an Everex 60 M streaming drive.  This
looks a lot like Wangtek.  It seems to behave well, and I have no 
complaints.  

One word of advice:  Whatever tape system you get get as large a memory
buffer on the controller board as they support.  My Everex is an old,
used model that came with 2K onboard.  A $5.00 8 K Ram chip cut my
backup times in half!

Another trick that I see Microport using is to make a program that sits
between your cpio and the tape, and it can buffer 20-30 K of data before
writing to tape.  This gives you better performance.
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My Opinions are my own. I can't imagine why anyone else would want them.
Clif Flynt	ihnp4!chinet!clif
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