alex@grian.cps.altadena.ca.us (Alex Pournelle) (03/20/90)
"Backup? I heard that word once..." I've had very good luck with the 3M 40Mbyte SCSI tape cartridge system. Admittedly, the DC2000 SCSI system on the Mac isn't fast (it can take an hour plus to back up 40Mbytes onto it with FastBack--read on), but it is standard and interchangeable. They're also cheap: I'll sell you one for $225 for "drive only". That means: a no case, no cabling, no software "hacker's special" and good ol' limited to stock on hand. Full-up, with cabling, case, power supply and Retrospect go for $575. That's a full-high case & passthrough cabling. This is the rig I use for backing up reconstituted drives in my life as a data-recovery specialist, and the customers seem quite happy. The 3M drives are very solid, standard, and work with FastBack, Retrospect, or the Apple Tape software. AppleTape is particularly slow, but it's quite available. I suspect you can get a legit copy from your local dealer. Fastback has the added feature that it runs in the background under MultiCrasher. Don't bother with the data-compression option; it literally trebles your time to the coast, with about a 15% compression (snore). Admittedly, you also want more than a meg (2 min.) to run background. Retrospect (hey!) also does asynchronous SCSI transfers, so it interleaves SCSI bus access. Pretty cool... If anyone's interested, we're, as usual: Workman & Associates 1925 East Mountain Street Pasadena, CA 91104 818-791-7979 fax:794-2297 And, yes, we recover info from PCs, Macs, and quite a gang of less usual computers. Alex