It’s important to keep in mind that most tape solutions are SCSI based; while IEEE 1394 and USB are making promising gains, the server market is still SCSI. I love to recommend IDE RAID solutions because of the price, but IDE tape solutions max out at 20 GB with NS20 or 30 GB with ADR. One other point: external drives are available for about $300 more, and offer an easy way to add tape storage to your server.
Once you’ve decided to make the leap to tape backup, there’s one more important choice: autoloading. This is a tape drive that accepts a number of tapes and loads a new one each day. Very convenient, but like all things costs more. Here’s a quick comparison: an HP DDS-4 drive is $2000, while an HP DDS-4 drive autoloading 6 tapes costs $3200. That’s five days of data backup plus a cleaning tape. It’s all a question of budget and time; will you remember to put a new tape in each day?
Based on the needs of a small network of fifty people or less I can safely recommend a DAT DDS-4 drive. 40 GB is a lot of space for files, and DDS-4 is a lot cheaper with 20 tapes than AIT, DLT or Mammoth. The VXA and ADR technologies are interesting and seem priced right, but tied to one manufacturer. DAT drives are universally accepted, media is readily available and it’s a price performance killer.
All this talk of tape drives came because of my companies need to purchase a new drive; our Exabyte 8mm 8 GB drive died three years into service. Look for a review of the HP SureStore DAT40 External next month.
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