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DLT 4000E on a 9000-C100

 
Filipe Matos
Occasional Advisor

DLT 4000E on a 9000-C100

Hi,
i am about to buy a DLT drive for backups on my small file server. This is 9000-C100.
Since the data volume that i wich to backup
is today over 11 GB, i will have to do the job with some DLT drive. After searching for available DLT drives (HP only) i found that the model DLT4000E-SE 20-40GB extern SE-SCSI
could be a good choice for me if:
1 - There are no known problems with the kind of hardware that i have;
2 - It is possible to create a device file with compression for use with tar.

If i could reach a compression level from ca. 1,5:1 (that is 30GB on 1 cartdrige) would be enough for the near future.

Please comment on this if you have some experience (oder sugestions are also welcome).

Thank you

Matos

 

 

P.S. This thread has been moved from General to Tape Libraries and Drives. - Hp Forum moderator

4 REPLIES 4
paul courry
Honored Contributor

Re: DLT 4000E on a 9000-C100

First of all the DLT will have to be put on it's own SCSI card or share one with only other tapes or CD's which must *not* be used while the DLT is running. You will saturate the bandwidth very quickly otherwise and start generating SCSI errors.

Compression is an iffy thing and depends on what you are tring to compress. Some things compress well, such as source code and other compress not at all. YMMV considerably.

Suggest you use DLT IV tapes to get the maximum throughout.

Anybody else have something to add?
Filipe Matos
Occasional Advisor

Re: DLT 4000E on a 9000-C100

Hi Courry,
thank you for the quick reply.
Actually, i have my single ended SCSI bus alone since all the other disks (incl. bootdisk) are on the WD SCSI bus.
Are there some DLT IV devices for the SE bus?
I would even take the external DLT80e if it works (also with hpux 10.20 of course).

Thank you

Matos
paul courry
Honored Contributor

Re: DLT 4000E on a 9000-C100

Suggest you either call your HP reseller or a good 3rd party refurbisher (such as Abtech Systems ) to get it properly speced out. However it should be nothing more than plugging it in, adding the driver to the kernal if necessary, rebooting and setting up the device file. When in doubt, let the guy selling you the hardware do the dirty work.
Michael Lampi
Trusted Contributor

Re: DLT 4000E on a 9000-C100

The Narrow SE SCSI bus on HP workstations is software limited to 5MB/sec. Most DLT drives will quickly hit this bottleneck, so you will not be able to get the best performance from your tape drive.

You might actually be better off sharing the wide differential SCSI bus between the tape drive and the DLT drive.
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