[Info-vax] DAT drive misreads write protect tab

[Rich Jordan]

On Oct 10, 4:47 am, Stephen Hoffman <seaoh... at hoffmanlabs.invalid>
wrote:
> On 2012-10-09 21:50:38 +0000, Rich Jordan said:
>
> > ...This is a home hobby site with zero budget and I'm just trying to help
> > them out.  Thanks for any info.  Suggestions to replace hardware would
> > not be helpful at the moment (though down the road they hope to
> > inherit a DLT IV drive and tapes).  They just need to keep their
> > backups going for now...
>
> IIRC, it was a mechanical switch#, but if they can't figure that detail
> out for themselves, then they're probably not ready to repair the drive
> themselves.  Put another way, the answer to the question they've asked
> just leads to another and probably more expensive question, and they're
> probably not ready to answer that one without additional assistance.
>
> In general, they will want to make cartage-level acquaintance with a
> local DEC/Compaq/HP site that's retiring old hardware, or with surplus
> vendors, or both.
>
> Alternatively and TMMV, from the catalogs of currently-available
> replacement hardware and hardware alternatives:
> DDS-3 drive US$10*;
> DLT-IV-class drive ~$25* and DLT-IV media ~$5-10* each;
> Disk-based backups; $varies (tape is mostly-dead; didn't you get the memo?)
> migration to emulation or the addition of (clustered) emulation, and
> backing up there ~$0+
> zip the data, and ftp or sftp it over onto another platform ~$0+
>
> ==
> #these are cheap drives; optical isn't/wasn't cheap, and cheap switches
> are cheap.
> *plus shipping
> +requires existing hardware and OS X, BSD, Linux, Windows or well,
> whatever happens to spin the propeller on their beanie, and with
> adequate storage.
>
> --
> Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC

Hoff
     thanks.  The hobbyist is out of work right now so literally no
expendable cash.  Maybe I can scare up an alternative from old stock
here for him.  I'm just happy they're really into making sure stuff is
backed up!  You know how rare that is at the consumer level,

     Re: tape is dead?  I know that a lot of people think cloud backup
is the shizzle and online porta-disks are the best alternative, but at
the (low) end, a tested/reliable DLT or better tape drive (on a system
that supports it) is so far above the reliability level of the
inexpensive (name brand) USB drives we've dealt with that it isn't
funny.  If you can afford real NAS boxes with decent drives, thats a
different story.

Thanks again