dplatt@coherent.com (Dave Platt) (04/02/88)
I'm considering buying a SCSI tape drive for my Mac II; backing up a
big hard disk to floppies is becoming a real chore (22 disks in the
Smartset already!). There appear to be a number of tape drives on the
market, as well as at least two giant-floppy (and/or Bernoulli) drives
and a Winchester-cartridge drive. I've seen very few reviews of these
devices in the Mac magazines... it seems that the market has been
evolving faster than the rags can get their reviews printed (so what
else is new? ;-).
So... I'm soliciting reports, reviews, opinions, flames, blatant slurs,
and/or paeans of satisfaction concerning any and all devices of this
sort. In particular, I'd like to hear about:
1) Compatibility with the Mac II, and/or any other compatibility issues
that may have arisen in your use of this sort of device (e.g. does it
work with third-party SCSI ports on 512s? Any difficulties when used
with other internal or external SCSI devices?)
2) How's the software? Buggy, rock-solid, or somewhere in between? Easy
to use, or full of misfeatures? How well does it handle incremental
backups?
3) How expensive, reliable, and available are the tapes, disks, or
whatever medium is used? Must additional/replacement whatevers be
bought from the vendor, or can I simply pop down to Fry's and pick
up an industry-standard cartridge or whatever? Have you had any tapes,
etc. go bad on you? Did you lose any data as a result?
4) Have you actually tried to use a backup from this device to recover from
a disaster of any sort? If so, did it work? If not, then [based on
your impressions to date] would you trust such a backup to pull your
chestnuts (or any other sort) out of the fire?
5) What's your impression of the vendor's support, reliability, and
stability? Would you bet on the vendor being in business, and
supporting the drive, three years from now? How good is the warranty?
6) Where did you buy it, how much did you pay for it, and did it come
as promised?
Please EMAIL your responses to me at one of the addresses in my signature
below; post them only as a last resort, if your mailer can't find a path
to me. I will summarize all responses, edit out peoples' return addresses
and other identifying information if asked to do so, and post a summary
of all significant responses.
At this point, I'm aware of the following devices; prices are lifted
from a recent MacWorld:
* Apple's SCSI tape drive (general impression: slow, expensive, and the
software ain't so hot)
* Everex EMAC 60T ($900-$1100)
* CMS Tapestack 60 ($800)
* NuData DataFile 40T ($1000/Icon Review); this one apparently formats
the tape and makes it look like a disk volume. Interesting; is it
effective?
* Bernoulli Box; dual-10-meg $1420, dual-20 $1849. How's media
reliability on this?
* Mountain (details uncertain)
* Mass Micro Data*Pak; 45-meg removable Winchester.
Many thanks in advance, folks!
--
Dave Platt
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