23 May
2015
23 May
'15
1:52 p.m.
On May 23, 2015, at 12:40, Steven M Jones
<classiccmp at crash.com> wrote:
Right. Me being the smart, forward-thinking guy I'm not, I bought a nice, sexy Mac
Pro, and then a nice little mid-range QNAP NAS that has neither fibre channel nor SAS
capabilities before I determined that I really could use proper tape backup and started
investigating what interfaces are suitable for that. There's one very nice-looking
LTO-6 drive with a Thunderbolt interface that will plug into my Mac Pro. Lots of kidneys
for that one!
(after I sell a few more kidneys, that is)
Careful hunting on eBay can produce LTO-4 capabilities (0.8/1.6TB) for not too many vital
organs. Just make sure you've got a fibre channel or SAS interface to talk to it.
... but I'm still a bit suspicious of their
similar (identical?) tape feeding scheme. All of my bad experience with things like QIC,
DAT, etc. had led me to be very suspicious of tape systems other than 1/2" open reel.
If you take a careful look at the TK and DLT mechanisms, I think you'll see that
they're an awful lot closer to an open reel design than any of the cartridge designs
(QIC, DAT, 8mm, AIT, etc).
I'd never say they're perfect because that would immediately render all my
backups on any media unreadable. But if I have to trust a tape mechanism, I'll stick
with the TK-DLT-LTO line.