d88-jwa@nada.kth.se (Jon W{tte) (08/31/89)
Thank you, kind people who have offered me advise on mass storage. To my disappointment I saw no mention of writable optical disks, but then, that's an exotic technique (I'm still interested in it). Several people have mentioned the poor quality of Ehman drives, but since I think a removable hard disk would be best for me, I'll be going for some of these (not Ehman, though) The best replies (who sum up what I got) were: werner@astro.as.utexas.edu writes: - I bought a TEAC-tape drive with 150meg capacity for $455 - (without case, power-supply or software); I organized a - mailing-list teac@rascal.ics.utexas.edu to discuss the drive - and there is currently a group purchase being organized - which should push the price to below $400. blob@apple.com writes: - Many of my colleagues are using a Syquest-based 45Mbyte removable hard - disk. I'm using Mass Microsystems, but there are many others on the - market. All use the same internals, so there shouldn't be too many - differences. The cheapest I've seen is Ehman. - For larger quantities of information, we've been using a Northern Telecom - server which contains a 940 Mbyte hard disk plus a 2.3 Gbyte tape backup - unit (helical scan?) using standard video 8mm tape cartridges. - The latest prices I've seen for the Exabyte drives alone is between 4000 - and 5000 dollars US. That's very expensive. They use standard 8mm - Video 8 cartridges (I just bought some cartridges at the local video - store.) hammen@csd4.csd.uwm.edu writes: - I would seriously consider getting one of the 45 MB SyQuest removable - cartridge drive systems. They have the speed of a hard drive (and can be - used as one if your main drive goes down), are Finder-accessible, and - much more convenient than tapes. Furthermore, they are getting cheaper - - $795 (U.S.) for a drive, plus $85 for each 45 MB removable cartridge. -- This is your fortune from h+@nada.kth.se: Silver's law: If Murphy's law can go wrong it will.