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ide vs. scsi tape drives

I think Tom's being very charitable

From: Tom Podnar <tom@microlite.com>
Subject: Re: 5.0.6 IDE Tape Installation
References: <1060143678.168050@grimiore.conceptual.net.au> 
Date: Wed, 06 Aug 2003 09:28:51 -0400

GB wrote:
> 
> Hi All,
> 
> I have a little problem with the installation of a travan IDE tape drive in
> 5.0.6.
> 
> The tape is a slave on the primary channel, followed the mkdev tape prompts,
> but to no avail, the tape does not show in the hwconfig screen at boot-up.
> 
> Any ideas??
> 
> The system has all the patches installed for 5.0.6
> 
> Thanks again
> 
> GB
I'm assuming you have it on primary slave because there is a hard drive
on
primary master.

From the Seagate web site:
"Note: We strongly recommend that you do not attach your tape drive to
any 40-pin cable that is already connected to a hard drive or to a
sound card. Doing so may result in a decrease in the tape drive's
performance and may cause incompatibility issues with some of the
bus mastering drivers."

In other words, don't do this.

Having said that, it is also true that the OpenServer IDE tape
drivers are - uh - insufficient.

They've never been stress tested on newer tape drives with faster
computer systems. Although they MAY successfully open-for-read and
open-for-write in many cases, they won't pass through some of the
critical commands needed for device control, QFA, etc. They also
don't work with newer and more sophisticated non-Travan tape
drives such as the ATAPI versions of the Exabyte VXA and Sony AIT.

Until these issues are resolved, we would recommend only SCSI tape
devices to protect an OpenServer 5.0.6 system.

-- 
Best Regards,
Tom
---
  D. Thomas Podnar - President  tom@microlite.com
  Microlite Corporation         724-375-6711 Voice
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+---------------------------------------------------------+
|Makers of BackupEDGE 2.0* - Backup and Disaster Recovery |
|Software for Unix and Linux Systems - Now With Encryption|
|Supports: Tape Drives, Libraries, CD/DVD Optical Media   |
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