Want to buy the right external Tape Drive for plenty of DLT IV tapes

[Ferdinand Mo]

I would like to buy an external tape drive (not necessarily rack mount type) for our email/file server. I have no idea which one is suitable for our case.

Since we have a lot of DLT IV tapes, it's idea to be able to reuse these tapes.

Currently we have:
- IBM x346 rackmount server: 72GBx3 RAID5
- IBM 13N2249 Ultra320 SCSI Adaptor Card
- HP DLT IV data cartridge 40/70/80 GB (C5141F) x 27

Thanks.

[Mike Reznak]

Hi,

some links here
http://search.hp.com/query.html?hpvc=US+-+English&qt=dlt2040&la=en

or look for

StorageWorks 20/40 GB DLT Tape Drive

Mike

[Jaclyn Rothe]

DLT 70, DLT 80, DLT VS80 all use DLT IV tapes. DLT 70 drives are end of line and out of support.

You would have to reformat all the tapes before use.
DLT tapes are good for 250 uses. One read is one use and one verify is another use.

If these tapes have been sitting around for a while, you want to make sure you only use tapes that have been stored correctly and with their plastic covers.
See Doc: http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=lpg50258&locale=en_US

Out of all those drives I recommend the DLT 80 for reliability and speed. DLT VS80 has half the transfer rate and is not always as reliable as the DLT 80 drive.

DLT 80 external Specs:http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=lpg50536&locale=en_US

I wouls however recommend an adaptec 29160 pci scsi card instead of the 320. The only difference is that the burst rate of the drive is only 20mb/s and 320mb/s from an ultra320 card tends to bottleneck and affect performance and compression and generate issues with IO errors or CRC errors. To prevent these issues you can access teh scsi bios (if available) and slow the sync transfer rate on the drive and scsi card to 20mb/s.

[Harry Serabian · Accepted solution]

If you have DLT IV media that has been pre written by another model DLT drive and you would like to reuse the media in a different model type DLT drive there are some compatabilty issues to keep in mind. This document explains tape drive and media compatability. If your are considering purchasing a different model DLT drive pay close attention to the Tape Format Compatability Chart.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/genericDocument?lc=EN&cc=US&docname=lpg50139

[Ferdinand Mo]

Decided to go for VS160 drive and tapes. That means will "throw away" all DLT IV tapes...

Thanks for the input.

[Stuart Whitby]

If you've found the input useful, then please assign points to the people who've taken the time to help you.

[Ferdinand Mo]

I feel lucky to have foudn this HP forum. Thanks everybody for your invaluable inputs.