DLT Tape backup under XP?

[Peter]

How is this supposed to work?

Under win2000, I used NTBACKUP.EXE and this worked fine.

I have now moved the same tape hardware (an Adaptec 29160N SCSI
controller and a Quantum DLT4 tape drive) to a newly built winXP
machine and while the SCSI controller shows up in Control Panel (and
it has the correct latest driver) the tape drive does not show
anywhere, and NTBACKUP tries to backup to the floppy in drive A: and
does not show any device options.

I don't recall needing drivers for the tape drive itself...

How is this supposed to work?

 

[M.I.5¾]

How is this supposed to work?

Under win2000, I used NTBACKUP.EXE and this worked fine.

I have now moved the same tape hardware (an Adaptec 29160N SCSI
controller and a Quantum DLT4 tape drive) to a newly built winXP
machine and while the SCSI controller shows up in Control Panel (and
it has the correct latest driver) the tape drive does not show
anywhere, and NTBACKUP tries to backup to the floppy in drive A: and
does not show any device options.

I don't recall needing drivers for the tape drive itself...

Your recollection is probably inaccurate. I would be very surprised if XP
was able to work with your tape drive without any drivers. With hard disks
being so cheap these days, why not backup to a hard disk using something
like Trueimage. It will be more reliable than tape anyway (and probably
quicker).

 

[Al Dykes]

How is this supposed to work?

Under win2000, I used NTBACKUP.EXE and this worked fine.

I have now moved the same tape hardware (an Adaptec 29160N SCSI
controller and a Quantum DLT4 tape drive) to a newly built winXP
machine and while the SCSI controller shows up in Control Panel (and
it has the correct latest driver) the tape drive does not show
anywhere, and NTBACKUP tries to backup to the floppy in drive A: and
does not show any device options.

I don't recall needing drivers for the tape drive itself...

How is this supposed to work?

I recall needing a vender-provided driver under Windows Server for a
Quantun DLT drive.

Can you plug a random SCSI disk drive into the chain and see it?

 

[M.I.5¾]

Actually I have just solved it. Yes, one needs drivers from Quantum
for the DLT drive. The drive did actually appear under Control Panel
(not sure why I missed it before...) with a question mark next to it;
pointing the PC to the directory with the Quantum drivers made it work
(with ntbackup.exe) just fine.

Tape is actually great because you can make multiple copies and put
them in a safe etc. I have ~ 120GB to back up and one cannot make 10
copies of that on a HD and if one did and lost that HD one loses the
lot. This is an old game, which is why the pros all still use tape,
after all these years...

There is a bit of a difference between what pros can afford and have access
to, and what the average home user can afford. I backup to a pair of hard
disks (using alternate disks). A least hard disks are a couple of orders of
magnitude more reliable than tape (DAT being much worse than QIC). There is
no need to make 10 copies of a backup unless you are especially paranoid. 2
copies is considered adequate, but one copy is a definite no no. Besides
there are no consumer tape drives large enough to hold my hard disk.

I use Trueimage too (great for its bootable recovery CD) but one
cannot restore individual files from the backup - short of mounting it
using Trueimage and I find that usually crashes (TI v11) the PC
completely.

There must be something wrong with your instalation. Restoring individual
files from a Trueimage backup is easy. It should mount without problems.

 

[M.I.5¾]

That's not my experience though I agree that a lot of DAT tape
cartridges are duff, and the drives don't last that long (a few years
at most, doing 1 backup a week).

But comparing the reliability of long term tape storage with the
reliability of data stored on a HD running 24/7, there is no contest.
The HD *will* fail.

Magnetic tape media has an amazingly short archival life. Typically 5 years
tops. And, yes, I have had experience of tape media that was completely
unreadable in such a short period of time. But we are talking about system
backup here not system archiving. Backup is a short term requirement as the
backup is effectively obsolete once the next one is made (depending on your
actual regime, it may not be obsolete until the backup after next).
However, having said that, I have occasionally had to rumage through older
backups (I do keep old backups regularly for up to a year).

 

[Bill in Co.]

Magnetic tape media has an amazingly short archival life. Typically 5
years,
tops.

Cites, please? I don't believe that figure. Heck, I've even got old
reel-to-reel tapes that still work fine (dating back to the 1960's).

 

[Nonny]

Cites, please? I don't believe that figure. Heck, I've even got old
reel-to-reel tapes that still work fine (dating back to the 1960's).

I don't think you'll get any cites. "5 years tops" is a laughable
contention.

Here's just one cite in support of that:

http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/2481

There are more:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/5tgo2c

 

[Bill in Co.]

I don't think you'll get any cites. "5 years tops" is a laughable
contention.

I think so too.

Here's just one cite in support of this:

http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/2481

There are more:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/5tgo2c

Interestingly enough, at that first site...:
(Gerecke, a physicist and storage expert at IBM Deutschland, has his own
opinions, some of which are given below):

Gerecke's recommendation for long term storage? Magnetic tape, of all
things. "Tape can have a life of 30 to 100 years."

And in talking about CDs....
"Unlike pressed original CDs, burned CDs have a relatively short life span
of between two to five years, depending on the quality of the CD".

(But I don't believe that one, however. The proof is in the pudding, and
I've got burned CDs older than that). But maybe it's more problematic
for CDs burned in the TAO (R/W) mode (or CD-R/Ws, if there is such a thing),
rather than the DAO mode.

(I may be getting the CD R/W terminology mixed up with the DVD's terminology
here, but I *do* know you can burn a CD in either TAO or DAO mode, and I
always use the latter (DAO mode), since it has much less potential for being
problematic).

 

[M.I.5?]

I have an IOMEGA Tape drive, one they sent me to Beta, and it still
reads/writes their tapes, just fine - more than 10 years ago.....

Most DLT Tape shows a Archive Life of 30 years, figure half of that if
you want to be reasonably sure you can read it.

Then you clearly don't know what 'archival life' means. You claim a 30 year
archival life and then add a second sentence that states that it is at least
half of what you claim. Archival life is the longest time after which you
can guarantee to recover the data with a certainty in the very high 90's of
percent from a single copy.

Most tape is rated for an archival life of just 4 years. It may *probably*
yield up its data much longer after this, but that's not what archival life
is about.

By the way, the archival life of words printed on a modern sheet of paper
are an astonishingly short 10 years.

 

[M.I.5¾]

Cites, please? I don't believe that figure. Heck, I've even got
old reel-to-reel tapes that still work fine (dating back to the 1960's).

So have I, but that is not archival life. Do you have any that you can't
read?

 

[M.I.5¾]

I think so too.


Interestingly enough, at that first site...:
(Gerecke, a physicist and storage expert at IBM Deutschland, has his own
opinions, some of which are given below):

Gerecke's recommendation for long term storage? Magnetic tape, of all
things. "Tape can have a life of 30 to 100 years."

And in talking about CDs....
"Unlike pressed original CDs, burned CDs have a relatively short life span
of between two to five years, depending on the quality of the CD".

(But I don't believe that one, however. The proof is in the pudding,
and I've got burned CDs older than that). But maybe it's more
problematic for CDs burned in the TAO (R/W) mode (or CD-R/Ws, if there is
such a thing), rather than the DAO mode.

(I may be getting the CD R/W terminology mixed up with the DVD's
terminology here, but I *do* know you can burn a CD in either TAO or DAO
mode, and I always use the latter (DAO mode), since it has much less
potential for being problematic).

All of these posts clearly do not understand what 'archival life' means.
Yes you can find examples of tapes that are still readable after a couple of
decades, but equally there are tapes that are no so readable after 1 decade.

There are newspapers around that date to the beginning of the 20th century,
yet the archival life of paper documents made using modern paper is just 10
years.

The archival life is the time after which you can *guarantee* to be able to
recover all the data from a single copy of the archive media. The archival
life should not be confused with the average life which is obviously much
longer (as, by definition, half the media will have a shorter life than
average). Media manufacturers will often quote average life, but are
reluctant to reveal any information about archival life because it is
invariably short, especially as the archival life is calculated using the
media from all manufacturers.

By the way to use your CD-R example: yes they can last on average several
years and possibly examples may go to a decade or more, but the archival
life is just 3 months.

 

[M.I.5¾]

I don't think you'll get any cites. "5 years tops" is a laughable
contention.

Here's just one cite in support of that:

http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/2481

This article is based on the life stated by the manufactureres of the media
and is the *average* life of the media (i.e. half the media has a shorter
life) not the archival life (i.e. *all* the media is guaranteed to have a
longer life).

 

[Nonny]

So have I, but that is not archival life. Do you have any that you can't
read?

Why no cites to support your laughable "5 years tops" contention?

Put up or shut up.

 

[Nonny]

This article is based on the life stated by the manufactureres of the media
and is the *average* life of the media (i.e. half the media has a shorter
life) not the archival life (i.e. *all* the media is guaranteed to have a
longer life).

Put up or shut up. Provide a cite for your "5 years tops".