[ale] Low-end tapedrives for SOHO environment

[Joe Knapka]

<griffisb at bellsouth.net> writes:

> I didn't want to hijack the Bacula thread, but did want to discuss various options for tape backups for the small office/home office environment. Particularly for a charity (church) on a budget.
> 
> I saw the discussions on good tape drive units, but know a church (or home user) would have problems justifying 1K or so. How do the IDE tape drives stack up as far as reliability? I saw that you can pick up a Seagate 10/20Gig IDE Tape Drive unit for $184 or so online. That is closer to my budget. Even saw them for less. Looks like tapes are in the $34 range. 

It's probably a Travan drive. Those things are like inkjet printers:
cheap up front, but the ongoing maintenance will bankrupt you.

Look for a SCSI DAT drive on eBay. You can get similar prices for
similar drive capacities (if you buy used), but DAT tapes are closer
to $7 each.

Anyway, as another poster pointed out, an extra HD or two is probably
the cheapest solution. Cheap tapes will never keep up with HD
capacity, so you'll never be able to do a complete system backup on
tape, barring some fundamental technology innovation.

Cheers,

-- Joe

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