[svlug] Replacing a tape drive

[Norman Shapiro]

I have an Exabtye Ecrix external SCSI tape drive.

I do a full backup of all important files every night, cycling through 11 tapes.
I don't do any incremental tape backups.

The tapes have an effective capacity of 20 gigabytes but my backups use only
about 5 gigabytes.

The tape drive is broken.  I'm having difficulty getting it repaired (I can't
get through Exabyte's phone queue to get an RMA and they don't seem to have an
Email or Web way of getting an RMA)

So I'm thinking of replacing the tape drive with some other tape (or other
removable media) drive, buying the drive and 10 or 11 media.  A replacement
Exabtye is expensive and, for my needs, an overkill.  The relevant number is the
approximate 5 gigabytes (before any hardware compression) per removable medium.
Since the writing is done at night and reading is rare, speed is not very
important. Doesn't have to be SCSI; USB is fine.

I don't want to use a hard drive for backup because of the danger of a hardware,
software or human glitch wiping it out.

I would appreciate advice.

    Norman Shapiro
    798 Barron Avenue
    Palo Alto CA 94306-3109
    (650) 565-8215
    norm at dad.org