reintom@rocky2.UUCP (07/18/86)
At my job, we use an Alloy FT-60 tape drive. I chose it for
several reasons.
1. It uses the 37-pin connector in the back of the PC. (If you don't
have one on the back of yours, you can get a board to put in the
PC.) The advantage to this is that you can move the tape unit
around from PC to PC and backup each one without plugging boards.
2. It uses 1/4-inch tape cartridges with a capacity of 60MB each. The
capacity is nice because I can back up the entire hard disk several
times a week on the same tape. I have "images" of the disk for
each time I backed up. This makes restoral easy. 1/4-inch tape is
less error prone and much faster compared with 1/8-inch tape. This
rules out the tape units that fit in your PC into a slot where your
disk drives go. This should be OK because of my reason in the
previous paragraph.
3. The software can be used from a menu or from batch files. This is
very important because both experts and novices can use it easily.
When using batch files, you can start a backup and walk away. When
the backup is over, the computer is returned to the DOS prompt.
As an unexpected bonus, Alloy includes a memory-resident program
that schedules jobs to be done at a specified time or frequency.
When the computer is at the DOS prompt and the time is up, the
computer starts up the requested program.
The Alloy FT-60 sells for about $995, although I think I have seen
it advertised at $795 from a company called S100. I saw the ad in
Byte Magazine. The tapes sell for about $23 if you buy them from
Disk World in Chicago or about $36 everywhere else. You have to
buy them in lots of five. The tapes are DC-600A type. I have only
seen them made by 3M and Inmac, although the Inmacs are likely to
be 3Ms.
Tom Reingold
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