I had asked about problems writing 4mm tape with one generation of Sun 4mm drive
and reading that tape with different generations of Sun 4mm drives. While I did
not get truly definite responses, they have stopped coming in so its time for a
summary.
Before getting to the points I got in those replies, let me say that this list
is very good at pointing out what you left out of what otherwise seemed to be a
complete problem description. I was asked with OSes and versions are involved. I
am writting on Solaris 2.5, reading on Solaris 2.5, 2.5.1, and a tape duplicator
of unknown make/model.
1. Given 4mm drives may be DDS-1, DDS-2, or DDS-3, tapes SHOULD be upward
compatible but not backward compatible. Thus, a tape written with the old Sun
drives, which appear to be DDS-1, SHOULD be fine when read by a new drive, which
appear to be DDS-2.
Unfortunately, this is exactly what I have been trying to do and where I see
intermitent failures.
2. One person reported it safer to stick with 120m tapes.
I have seen the failures with both 90m and 120m tapes, so I don't see sticking
with 90m tapes resolving the problems.
3. One person stated that they trust only Verbatim tapes, and have seen problems
with Maxell and other non-Verbatim brands.
I've only tried a few Verbatim tapes, so my experience is too limited to know
whether the intermitent problems we see exist when they are used.
My conclusion is that I should go ahead and try Verbatim on my current tape buy
and see what happens. Two followup questions to speed this buy:
1. Do I buy 120m or 90m tapes? The pricing appears about the same, and I have
not seen any compelling information for either choice. All things being equal, I
wouldn't mind having the extra capacity. But are they equivalent for all
essential purposes OTHER than capacity?
2. What dealer/vendor should I use? I have found a couple of vendors on the
network selling these tapes at roughly $3 a tape. This is much lower than many
other vendors, but tape is tape so long as the brand and model match, right?
My thanks to:
Charlie Mengler <charliem@anchorchips.com>
Dennis Martens <MARTENSD@health.qld.gov.au>
Ron Kelley <rkelly@InfoAve.Net>
"Brandon K. Devlin" <bdevlin@emu.logicon.com>
Marc S. Gibian
COMSYS Information Technology Services phone: (781) 377-6350
PRISM/TFS email: gibian@stars1.hanscom.af.mil
or is it: gibian@hanscom.af.mil
well, maybe: gibianm@hanscom.af.mil
and if all else fails: marc.gibian@acm.org
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Sep 28 2001 - 23:12:38 CDT