Re: For the hardware guys...

[Adam Williams <awilliam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>>How much to TR-4 tapes cost.  DAT tapes for my drive cost $4.99, tapes
>>>for my  floppy tape cost $19~23.  Don't overlook the long term cost of
>>>tapes,  a more expensive drive that uses cheaper tapes is actually 
less
>>>expensive.
>>Agreed... But $500-600 bucks for a new drive is way too expensive for 
me.
>Then get an older DDS-1 or DDS-2 drive instead of the DDS-3.
>The drives are more reasonably priced and the tapes are still cheap.
>Besides, it's a much better drive IMO.

Exactly ,my ~$80 dollar DAT drive from Onsale only holds 2Gb but it's 
*FAST* and has been completely problem free.  And since my "/home" 
isn't bigger than 2Gb the capacity isn't a problem.  And the "newer" 
DAT drive I buy someday will be able to read the tapes from the old 
drive (not that I suspect the current drive will die anytime soon).
DAT drives are fairly common so it's also a nice way to take HUGE files
to/from the office (a 40Gb DAT drive that happily reads my tapes) or 
other places.  The cost of RW CD media has come down so the last point
isn't as big a deal as it once was, but still 2Gb > 640M.