CompuServe Messages

Craig – Basically, they're fine. They are not real fast, but they're as fast as a reasonable hard drive was two years ago. One thing to bear in mind, though, is that they do go bad, just like floppies can. We use them to move massive files to service bureaus and the like, but not for permanent storage of "mission critical" items. Generally, when one craps out, Norton utilities or another like it can resurrect the disk and data. I've only had one die outright. On the other, other hand, once you get the drive, the cartridges are dirt cheap (about $70/40 MB). At that cost, you could probably use two containing the same data for the archiving purpose and not have to worry at all. Plus, they don't die that often, any more than floppies do. Now, with all of that said, let it be known that none of our PC sport one of these, only our Macs. When they go bad, it tends to be loss of SCSI driver or Vol Info Block data, so the disk won't mount or can't tell where anything is on itself. These kinds of errors I consider to be sympomatic of the Mac OS which, as I MENtioned to that Wayne guy, is the most unstable out there. Hope that helps a bit. Find a money-back guarantee and give it a whirl….For archiving, I use ArcServe running on MicroNet 5 GB DAT tapes. The access time is about 20+ seconds for finding a particular file. Not bad, considering it's tape. David Taffet