MO-drives, Samba (was Disk space problems)
Rudi Nunlist ((no email))
Thu, 15 Aug 1996 09:38:05 -0700
We have been using a couple of MO drives for over two years on a Sun
and on an IBM RS6000. They are used daily for system backups, and by
our users for archiving data. So far, we have not seen any failures (but
then, archived data are often never read again... )
The drives we use are Maxoptix Tahiti III which hold ~ 1 GB per disk.
(I remeber reading about heat problems with earlier models, but cannot
recall the details.)
We did purchase software drivers for the drive. Since the media is removable,
the OS needs to be able to prevent ejecting a mounted cartridge (lest you
really want to have fun with fsck..). In 94, this was not a standard
feature (and, even today it may not be..).
The T-III drives are very fast. There is no noticeable speed difference when
Processing 1D data. The price for the cartridges is ~ $70, and still declining.
About the JAZ drive becoming a standard, maybe, maybe not. IMHO, the reliability
remains to be proven, whereas MO technology is mature and well established.
Another possibility for users of M$win is to install samba and let users mount
it for processing/archiving/whatever under windforworkgroups or win95.
See http://samba.canberra.edu.au/pub/samba.
I installed samba on a Sun (4.1.3) and Linux boxes, it works very well and does not
require additional hardware.
Regards,
Rudi Nunlist