Travan tape drives?
Mat Charles
Hi folks. Newbie tape drive question.
I'm thinking about a backup system for my i386 OpenBSD box. On the
recommendation of a friend, I looked into 4/8GB IDE Travan drives - the
specs are nice, and I can actually afford to buy one. However, I have a
horrible suspicion that they won't work under OpenBSD.
Has anyone had any success with them? Failing that, how about the SCSI
equivalents?
Thanks,
Mat Charles.
STeve Andre'
see if I'd had a user with a bad experience with this tape drive, and
found not one but two people who'd that drive had screwed over. I wouldn't
recomend using them.
--STeve Andre'
and...@msu.edu
At 08:20 PM 2/25/2000 -0500, Michael Shalayeff wrote:
>re
>scsi travans work fine.
>except they are exceptionally unreliable and tapes cost a fortune....
>cu
>
>Making, drinking tea and reading an opus magnum from Mat Charles:
Michael Shalayeff
scsi travans work fine.
except they are exceptionally unreliable and tapes cost a fortune....
cu
Making, drinking tea and reading an opus magnum from Mat Charles:
>
> Hi folks. Newbie tape drive question.
>
> I'm thinking about a backup system for my i386 OpenBSD box. On the
> recommendation of a friend, I looked into 4/8GB IDE Travan drives - the
> specs are nice, and I can actually afford to buy one. However, I have a
> horrible suspicion that they won't work under OpenBSD.
>
> Has anyone had any success with them? Failing that, how about the SCSI
> equivalents?
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Mat Charles.
>
--
paranoic mickey (my employers have changed but, the name has remained)
Nick Holland
Actually, I've had curiously mixed success with TR-4 drives.
The cheap IDE drives on Windows machines work more or less acceptably.
The SCSI drives on servers: JUNK. PURE JUNK.
I put three in client's machines, all HP drives, two "low-end" (T4000), one
"high-end" ("SureStore T4"). The low-end drives worked for a while, but
never reliably. The high-end drive worked for about a week, then died.
Replaced under warranty, ran for another week, then died. HP gave me hell
on replacing the drive, too. Quite unacceptable for server work. Never
bothered trying to replace it again. I'll never put another TR-4 in a
customer's server. Cost me too much time (and a DDS-2 drive I bought them
out of pocket).
Bizzarely enough, the IDE drives on Windows machines (mostly Seagate,
couple HPs, couple Exabyte (NLA), some others) have been fairly reliable.
HOWEVER, the tapes are EXPENSIVE, and horribly unreliable. They have a
servo track on them, so they can't be field-reformatted (erased, yes.
Bulk-erased and reformatted, no). Get a stray magnetic field, another $30
(U.S.) tape hits the trash can.
Go DAT. You can pick up new or like new drives on E-bay for barely more
than the price of the lowest price TR-4 SCSI, and the tapes cost less than
$10 (U.S.), the lower tape cost will be VERY greatly appreciated, and
depending on your rotation, may make the price difference between DAT and
TRx format about zero. I'm not happy with DAT drive reliability, but it
seems to be the best short of a DLT (hint: Clean your DAT drive regularly.
Uncleaned drives seem to last about one month past warranty!)
Another advantage of DAT: Your disk system doesn't have to be as fast as it
needs to be to get a TR-4 streaming. DAT drives are pretty forgiving of
irregular or slow data streams. This may actually be part of the problem
with the SCSI TRx drives. The IDE drives seem to "slow down" on a slow
data stream permitting them to run smoothly and quickly, but the SCSI
drives seem to be intent on running full speed all the time, and many
applications can't seem to keep up, so the drive spends more time
backtracking than it does actually writing data, that puts a lot of stress
on the drive and the tapes.
No real experience with TR-5 drives yet. A client purchased one just this
week. Result of first backup: "Hardware Failure" (later runs were more
successful). Not planning on doing much with them, either, unless someone
explains to me why the TR-4s are such junk and why the TR-5 is better. I
don't like media you can't bulk-erase and start over with.
I'm glad to have an excuse to unload about TR-4 drives. 8-)
Nick.
Adam Thompson, MCNE, MCSE
> I'm thinking about a backup system for my i386 OpenBSD box. On the
> recommendation of a friend, I looked into 4/8GB IDE Travan drives - the
> specs are nice, and I can actually afford to buy one. However, I have a
> horrible suspicion that they won't work under OpenBSD.
>
> Has anyone had any success with them? Failing that, how about the SCSI
> equivalents?
I've noticed a few replies already discussing the IDE vs SCSI issue;
what I've experienced follows:
1. Stay away from HP (aka Colorado) QIC drives, including all Travans
2. Stay away from old Iomega QIC drives, including all Travans (now made
by Tecmar)
2b. Stay away from the Tecmar "Ditto" Travan drives, but Tecmar's
original line (the "NS" or "NSync" drives) seems to work well
3. Seagate drives have all worked well for me. DAT and Travan alike.
There isn't anyone else who makes Travan drives, that I know of. Don't
touch WangTEK with a ten-foot pole: they're out of business and their
drives weren't all that great to begin with.
Note that Travan is a special-case of QIC tape technology. It's the
same basic guts as your standard old Archive QIC-150 drives.
I don't agree completely on the subject of DAT reliability. I find DDS
drives to be horribly unreliable - everyone I know using DDS-1 or DDS-2
(don't know any with DDS-3 yet) replaces their tape drive about every 18
months, whether they clean them weekly or not.
Having said that, it's probably cheaper to keep replacing your DAT drive
than it is to keep replacing your Travan tapes. I get TR-4 tapes for
about CAD$40 wholesale. That's at LEAST 3 or 4 DDS tapes for every
Travan tape.
Assuming: Seagate SCSI TR-4 ("Scorpion") drive: CAD$600
10 TR-4 tapes @ CAD$40: CAD$400
Initial cost: $1000
Assuming: Seagate SCSI DDS-2 drive: CAD$1200
10 DDS tapes @ CAD$12: $120
Initial cost: $1320
However, at the 3-year mark:
0 new TR4 drives: $0
40 new TR4 tapes (replacements): $1600
1 new DAT drives: $1200
20 new DAT tapes (they don't fail quite as often): $240
So, your total operating costs at the end of three years, using my
assumptions:
TR4: $2600
DDS2: $2760
For a slightly faster, much more common / reliable / compatible drive,
with a vastly better SCSI interface (the TR4 drives don't support much
of a SCSI command-set; they barely conform to SCSI-2) you only pay $170
more.
I chose the three-year mark because that's about the lifespan of a
regularly-used QIC drive.
Obviously, YMMV. This reflects my own experiences only, and I know many
people have vastly different experiences with tape technology. For what
it's worth, I'm now using AIT tapes.
--
Adam Thompson, MCNE, MCSE, CWT, A+
Vice-President / Chief Technology Officer, Commerce Design Inc.
<atho...@commerced.com>
tel: (204) 942-1648, fax: (204) 989-8080, cell: (204) 782-6198
Wim Vandeputte
On Sat, 26 Feb 2000, Mat Charles wrote:
> I'm thinking about a backup system for my i386 OpenBSD box. On the
> recommendation of a friend, I looked into 4/8GB IDE Travan drives - the
> specs are nice, and I can actually afford to buy one. However, I have a
> horrible suspicion that they won't work under OpenBSD.
I don't have the IDE version, maybe it will work through the ATAPI2SCSI
layer. The SCSI version works just fine. Better get the 10/20 GB version.
I got a Tandberg and an HP, the HP is pretty crap. I went through 2 bad
Tandbergs before I got a good one:
st0 at scsibus0 targ 2 lun 0: <TANDBERG, NS20 Pro 20 GB, 7.30> SCSI2 1/sequential removable
st0: st0(ncr0:2:0): 10.0 MB/s (100 ns, offset 8)
Pretty cheap, it shows: no working eject function. You have to rip out the
tape yourself.
10 GB native is not much. I'm currently looking for something bigger:
anybody got comments on an Exabyte Mammoth2 (60 GB native)? (other than that
it's a bit expensive ;-). It's either that or an SLR 50 GB from Tandberg.
What other alternatives are there?
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
"What is this talk of 'release'? We do not make software 'releases'.
Our software 'escapes', leaving a bloody trail of designers and quality
assurance people in its wake."
Adam Thompson, MCNE, MCSE
> Pretty cheap, it shows: no working eject function. You have to rip out the
> tape yourself.
Um, there's no such thing (AFAIK) as a QIC drive with an eject
function. It has nothing to do with the cheapness of the drive and much
to do with the fact that the tapes are secured by heavy, stiff retention
mechanism - and the fact that the tapes themselves are damn heavy thanks
to the metal plate. The eject mechanism would have to be pretty
powerful to pop a QIC tape out - hence the manual, mechanical eject on
all the drives I've seen.
Hold a DDS tape in one hand; now drop another DDS tape into your hand
(using your other hand, assuming you have one of course) - not a
noticeable impact.
Now, hold a QIC (or Travan) tape in one hand - drop another into your
hand. Bet that hurt. :-)
Note that Exabyte still typically doesn't "eject" the tape so much as
incline the holder so you can get the tape out yourself. Even 8mm tapes
are "heavy" for mid-level tape drives. You should hear (and feel!!) the
effort my Sony drive goes to when ejecting an AIT (8mm) tape.
> 10 GB native is not much. I'm currently looking for something bigger:
> anybody got comments on an Exabyte Mammoth2 (60 GB native)? (other than that
> it's a bit expensive ;-). It's either that or an SLR 50 GB from Tandberg.
> What other alternatives are there?
AIT-2. Chris Capuccio (also on this list) is using AIT, as am I. I'm
only using AIT-1, which has a native capacity of 25Gb. AIT is basically
a super-duper 8mm tape with the memory chip embedded in it. Which is
why the f*ing tapes cost $100+ each!
-Adam
Marc Espie
>
> On Sat, 26 Feb 2000, Mat Charles wrote:
>
> > I'm thinking about a backup system for my i386 OpenBSD box. On the
> > recommendation of a friend, I looked into 4/8GB IDE Travan drives - the
> > specs are nice, and I can actually afford to buy one. However, I have a
> > horrible suspicion that they won't work under OpenBSD.
>
> I don't have the IDE version, maybe it will work through the ATAPI2SCSI
> layer. The SCSI version works just fine. Better get the 10/20 GB version.
> I got a Tandberg and an HP, the HP is pretty crap. I went through 2 bad
> Tandbergs before I got a good one:
support is there, but I'm beginning to seriously think HP does not follow
any IDE standard in existence...
--
Marc Espie
|anime, sf, juggling, unicycle, acrobatics, comics...
|AmigaOS, OpenBSD, C++, perl, Icon, PostScript...
| `real programmers don't die, they just get out of beta'
Nicholas Lee
> I've noticed a few replies already discussing the IDE vs SCSI issue;
> what I've experienced follows:
>
> 1. Stay away from HP (aka Colorado) QIC drives, including all Travans
> 2. Stay away from old Iomega QIC drives, including all Travans (now made
> by Tecmar)
> 2b. Stay away from the Tecmar "Ditto" Travan drives, but Tecmar's
> original line (the "NS" or "NSync" drives) seems to work well
> 3. Seagate drives have all worked well for me. DAT and Travan alike.
Do the seagate drives work well with openbsd? I've told been by some
one that some tape drive's hardware compression doesn't work with
freebsd. I assume openbsd would have the same issue. Haven't been able
to find documentation with regard to that yet though.
I'm looking at buying a tape system at the moment from my openbsd
servers, any suggestions what are the most cost-effective models?
Nicholas
Chris Cappuccio
| Do the seagate drives work well with openbsd? I've told been by some
| one that some tape drive's hardware compression doesn't work with
| freebsd. I assume openbsd would have the same issue. Haven't been able
| to find documentation with regard to that yet though.
|
| I'm looking at buying a tape system at the moment from my openbsd
| servers, any suggestions what are the most cost-effective models?
|
While I've also had terrible luck with HP and other cheap Travan and similar
devices, Seagate AIT drives have always worked perfectly for me, every time,
and fast... The hardware compression has never caused a problem that I've
noticed. (and yes i've restored stuff from backups many times ;)
--
Reverend Chris Cappuccio
http://www.dqc.org/~chris/
Adam N. Thompson, MCNE, MCSE
> Do the seagate drives work well with openbsd? I've told been by some
> one that some tape drive's hardware compression doesn't work with
> freebsd. I assume openbsd would have the same issue. Haven't been able
> to find documentation with regard to that yet though.
Seagate offers most of their "Hornet" (i.e. Travan) drives in several
models, both ATAPI and SCSI, with and without Hardware compression, with
or without software, and internal or external.
Given a) the premium cost for compression
and b) the fact that most software can compress
and c) the fact that hw compression is proprietary anyway
I always just go for the basic drive.
I just checked my wholesale prices:
ST28000N-M (bare TR4 SCSI) - $310
ST28000N-MC (bare TR4 SCSI w/HWCOMP) - $417
<grumble>I paid over $600 for my ST28000N-M drive, and I paid over $400
for the ST28000A-M in the Windows box...</grumble>
I only had an ST28000N-M hooked up to OpenBSD for about four hours. It
backed up successully once. Beyond that, I can only offer experience
with Linux and Win95/98 on that drive.
For smallish amounts of data (0Gb < n < 20Gb),
Most cost-effective, SHORT TERM: Travan (Seagate TR4 SCSI)
Most cost-effective, MEDIUM TERM: DDS (any)
Most cost-effecitve, LOOOOONG TERM: 8mm (any)
For medium amounts of data (20Gb < n < 50Gb), you can choose among DLT,
AIT, DDS3. I don't know the cost breakdowns here.
For large amounts of data (50Gb < n < [Inf]), your choices no longer
have anything to do with price. You're probably looking at IBM Magstar
systems or Kodak Digital Science library system when you start talking
hundreds of gigabytes.
--
-Adam Thompson, MCNE, MCSE, CWT, A+
Vice-President / Chief Technology Officer
Commerce Design Inc.
atho...@commerced.com
tel: (204) 942-1648
fax: (204) 989-8080
Angus Scott-Fleming
> I don't agree completely on the subject of DAT reliability. I find DDS
> drives to be horribly unreliable - everyone I know using DDS-1 or DDS-2
> (don't know any with DDS-3 yet) replaces their tape drive about every 18
> months, whether they clean them weekly or not.
Most of the time that's about the time you upgrade your server's
drives to larger disks anyway <grin> ....
> Having said that, it's probably cheaper to keep replacing your DAT drive
> than it is to keep replacing your Travan tapes.
<snip> Nice analysis, worth keeping (after adjusting for the funny-
money/greenback conversion ;-).
---------------------------------------------------------
Angus Scott-Fleming GeoApplications, Tucson, Arizona
ang...@geoapps.com 1-520-323-9170 / fax 1-208-248-3124
---------------------------------------------------------
Proud user of Pegasus Mail, PM-Burst and Waffle
---------------------------------------------------------
Angus Scott-Fleming
> I'll support the opinions we've heard so far: Avoid Travan.
Me, too.
> Bizzarely enough, the IDE drives on Windows machines (mostly Seagate,
> couple HPs, couple Exabyte (NLA), some others) have been fairly reliable.
> HOWEVER, the tapes are EXPENSIVE, and horribly unreliable. They have a
> servo track on them, so they can't be field-reformatted (erased, yes.
> Bulk-erased and reformatted, no). Get a stray magnetic field, another $30
> (U.S.) tape hits the trash can.
FWIW almost all the Travan tapes I've bought have "lifetime warranties" and I've been able to replace the failed ones for the cost of shipping & the secretarial time to ship 'em back. But I'm switching to DAT as the cost differential for drive + 10 tapes is about the same either way.