#WANGTEK Tape Backup
19 messages in this thread
Excellent news Dominick!
The Wangtek just gave up giving me trouble and started to work. Maybe it heard
some new cuss words that made it give up troubling me. But not without a last
struggle!
The little belt one can see from the top of the drive, had been rubbing on
something – and was in bad shape. Replaced it with a belt from my store of
belts for VCR's – and all was well.
I now have both the hard drive and the Wangtek working in harmony!
Thanks for all your advice, help, and the glimmer of hope you gave me.
Regards, HILARY
Hilary,
Great! I'm glad you got it working. I guess you won't need my previous
message. Now wait until you try multiple backups on one tape. 😎 Just be
aware that if you back up more than one partition or one HD to the same
tape, that searching for it takes about as long as actually backing it up.
If you don't know this, you might think that something is wrong.
For instance, if you have 4 partitions on one tape and you want to
restore from the fourth partition, the tape has to be rewound, then spaced
forward. It has to read all the data on the tape to find its place. So it
can take 20 minutes to locate the fourth partition before you can restore.
Just be aware of this, otherwise you might think the drive is just
spinning endlessly and will never stop.
Enjoy the WangTek!
Dom Fontana
–> Sent from NY via AP <–
Dom-
Doesn't the fast search command get around this? Or is that SCSI-II
only?
Paul
Paul,
> Doesn't the fast search command get around this? Or is that SCSI-II
only?
Don't quote me, but I think that's SCSI-II. I know that I'm not able to
use it with Quarterback and a regular SCSI controller.
Dom Fontana
–> Sent from NY via AP <–
Dom-
Rats. I guess no fast searching w/ my 12Gauge.
Well, such is life.
Paul
Paul,
Yes, the WangTek works, but it's relatively slow, especially for
searching. It's really okay for one backup per tape, but with multiple
partitions, it's a real nuisance to access any partition other than the
first one.
Dom Fontana
–> Sent from NY via AP <–
Dom-
I thought the 5525ES was supposed to be a fairly fast drive – in the
sub-Gig range, at least. Was I wrong? Have I made a tragic mistake?
Paul
Paul,
> I thought the 5525ES was supposed to be a fairly fast drive
I have the WangTek 5150ES tape drive myself and I can't comment on the
speed of the 5525ES drive. I get about 9-10 megs a minute for backup. On a
240 meg hard drive, that's over 24 minutes. So you haven't made a mistake,
but streaming tape drives in general are not noted for their speed.
So if you want to back up the entire drive unattended, 24+ minutes
isn't that bad. But if you have 4 partitions on one tape, and you want to
restore from the last partition, it is a nuisance to have to wait while
the drive spaces over the first 3 partitions to get to the beginning of
the 4th partition. It takes about as long to space over the 3 partitions
as it would take to actually restore from them. Plus, you don't really get
any status report while you're spacing, other than a Tape Spacing
requester. So for me to get to my 4th backup, I have to Space 3 times and
it takes about 20 minutes. Most of the time you're just sitting there, for
what seems like an eternity while the drive just spins away, and you have
no idea what position the tape is up to.
It's my understanding that the tapes have 6 or 8 tracks to hold the
data. If the drive knew its position on the tape, then if the tape heads
were at the beginning of track one and the partition you wanted was at the
beginning of track 6, the heads could just instantaneously go to track 6
and you'd be ready to go. However, the drive is linear and not random
access, so the drive will actually have to space through and read tracks 1
through 5 before stopping at track 6 and it seems like such a waste of
time.
Dom Fontana
–> Sent from NY via AP <–
Dom,
Do you by any chance have any documentation on that 5150ES?
I'm moving it to another system and need to know how the terminators are
configured but can't find any description. Thing has jumpers all over the
place and I vaguely recall it not being the obvious one.
thanx
lGlamb lglamb+RV13@rvdc.unisys.com
CTOS Data Comm Support
> Do you by any chance have any documentation on that 5150ES?
No, but I believe the terminators are located right in front of
the SCSI connector on the drive. All the terminator packs should
either be all in or all out, depending on whether or not you want the
drive terminated. Is that the info you were looking for?
Larry,
My 5150ES has two terminator resistors that are Single In-line Pins and
another DIP resistor (sorta looks like an IC chip). Both types are located
near the 50 pin header.
Christopher
Christopher, Dom
Thanx. Think I've got it now. They're at positions RP2 RP3 and RP4
right?
It's that DIP at RP2 that threw me. Never came across one of those on any
of my other SCSI devices.
But is RP1 involved at all (it's located near the set of jumpers top
center)?
lGlamb lglamb+RV13@rvdc.unisys.com
CTOS Data Comm Support
fast search can be done on ANY tape drive, if the software supports it.
All tape drives can be addressed as rewinding or non-rewinding devices.
Unfortunately, Ami-Back addresses the drive only as rewinding, thus even
though you can use the Amigados "magtape" command to fast forward to a
specified tape filemark, it does no good since the Ami-Back program will
rewind the tape and FF itself!
I have suggested that they modify the way that they address the device,
and until they do I don't use Ami-Back for routine backups. Instead I use
gnutar and the scsi tape device found here.
hope this helps!
Bill… on Autopilot in Womelsdorf 😉
Bill,
I believe representatives from Central Coast and Moonlighter have
explained why their software doesn't support fast search. They lead me to
believe it wasn't feasible to implement and that the tape drive always has
to read all the data on the tape in order to find its place.
Dom Fontana
–> Sent from NY via AP <–
Well I don't like to speak ill of others, but what they are saying is
simply not true… I do exactly that with the tar and magtape commands all
of the time!
Bill… on Autopilot in Womelsdorf 😉
> I do exactly that with the tar and magtape commands all of the time!
Is there a way of adding that capability to Quarterback with ARexx
macros?
Dom Fontana
–> Sent from NY via AP <–
>Is there a way of adding that capability to Quarterback with ARexx<
I don't have QB, but Ami-Back rewinds the tape itself, so I don't
think that you can bypass that "feature". I have talked to the folks
at Moonlighter once, and I will probably talk to them again about
this!
BTW, what are you going to do with your ART processor??
Bill… on Autopilot in Womelsdorf 😉
Bill,
QB lets you disable rewinding.
The warranty didn't expire yet, but it will soon. At that time, I'd
like the on/off switch. I'll check the expiration date of the warranty.
Dom Fontana
–> Sent from NY via AP <–
OK, then it is fairly simple, assuming that they use standard file
marks, which I would guess that they do.
I know noting about QB, so I am going to make a few guesses, but you
should be able to put it together…
if QB accesses the tape directly you will need to add a tape handler,
I use Matt Dillons DTape, which is in either the user or tech
libraries, I don't remember, try a browse all looking for the keyword
tape. If QB already provides a handler (look in the L directory) then
you should be okay.
Anyway, use the CBM command "magtape" to skip tape files, and then,
with rewind disabled just use QB normally.
example: >magtape DEVICE=gvpscsi.device UNIT=1 skip 4
would advance the tape to the beginning of the second tape file, for SCSI
unit 4 on a GVP SCSI host adapter.
Let me know if you need any more help!
Bill… on Autopilot in Womelsdorf 😉