#Tape backup ?
20 messages in this thread
Recently I bought and installed a tape backup for my IBM clone computer. Cost
was around $260.
Would like to have tape backup for our Amiga 2000 – as we run the rather huge
Toaster program – with lots of Framestores.
Can anyone tell me if there is a tape backup for the Amiga 2000 and, if so what
is the street price for such an item ?
Thanks, Hilary.
Hilary,
You can use just about any scsi tape drive. I have an Archive Viper on my
A3000.
QuarterBack and AmiBack both support backups to tape drives.
Thanks for the good news Michael.
I suppose that from the physical aspects, all I have to do is to get myself a
tape backup drive with SCSI control – pop it into my open front 5.5" open slot,
the get a "daisy chain" type cable – and parallel it up with my present hard
drive – which is SCSI ?
I am running QUARTERBACK (Ver 5.0) and am expecting their latest update
anytime.
What do I do exactly to get Ye Olde 2000 to accept the tape drive as a member
of the family? Will there be any complications on boot-up? The mechanics do
not present any problem to me, but I am somewhat blind when it comes to
re-arranging software.
Hilary.
>>What do I do exactly to get Ye Olde 2000 to accept the tape
drive as a member of the family?<<
Just set the SCSI ID# on the tape drive to an unused # and make sure the
termination is correct. When the Amiga boots, it scans the scsi bus
looking for devices, and as long as each device has a unique scsi address
and is terminated properly, it will recognize the device.
The only problem you may run in to on an internal installation is that
since power will always be on, you may need to keep a tape in the drive.
I have my tape drive mounted externally in a box with my CD ROM drive, and
it remains powered off on boot up unless I'm going to be using one of the
devices; without power, the devices are invisible to the system… but if
they are powered on during boot up, they 'may' confuse the system if no
media is present.
Thanks very much for the explanation Michael.
I am trying to find SCSI type tape backup drives – so far no luck in looking
thru' the usual intake of catalogs. Secondly, I wonder about the price? The
one I use on my 386 PC cost me between 200 and 300 bucks. Have some faint idea
that anything I try and get for the Amiga will cost an arm and a leg!
If tape backup drives for the Amiga come out as more costly than for the PC.,
then probably the best route I can take is to forget tape, and buy myself
another larger hard drive – the use it just for backups.
What do you think?
Regards, Hilary
Hilary:
I've been watching DAT backup prices, and you can now buy a brand new
external DAT drive in a very nice case for only $750.00. The company name
is APS, and they are very reputable. I've ordered several thousand dollars
worth of perpherals from them, and never had a problem. You can find their
ads in the back of most PC and Mac mags.
DAT drives are nice because you can use them with TapeWorm-FS as a huge
storage media for rendered Framestores from your Toaster. (It makes the
tape drive look like a hard drive to Lightwave….Pretty cool.)
Since it's a SCSI device, you can use it on your IBMs and Macs too….
Erik Flom
Hello good friend Erik.
Just cannot understand why my tape backup for my 386 PC. cost me around $260,
while similar system for the Amiga are double to treble that price.
For around the $700 mark, I could buy myself a couple of 250 Meg hard drives,
and use one or both for backup. I most certainly am NOT going to shell out $750
for a somewhat simple tape backup. It does not make any sense.
Have though also about "plug-in" hard drives. Quite a fe advertised in
"Computer Shopper". The drawer and electrics are around $100. You provide the
drive.
Anyhow…. I am still pondering and open for suggestions. Hilary.
Computer shopper has some very good suppliers, but they don't list a lot
of SCSI…since IDE and these special format things are so popular on the
IBM's.
But they stock 'em. Just call a couple of the hard drive specialist
companies and ask for SCSI tape units – without any PC interface card,etc.
I think you'll find what you want at decent 300-400 prices.
Gary
on AutoPilot from Charlotte, NC
I saw a list of several sizes of SCSI tape drives in the latest D&H
catalog. They're a distributor, so I guess most dealers would have heard
of them.
-Jim
I think the reason the tape backups are so expensive is the same reason
that network cards cost so much.
Until recently, there was no demand for these products in the Amiga
market. With low sales, the developers have to recoup their costs by
charging more. (….resulting in fewer sales, etc. :^)
Your primary concern should be how much data you need to back up. It's
alot easier to back all your stuff up at once, rather than have a
hodge-podge of backups. With everything on one or two tapes, it's much
cheaper to recover data when needed. However, if you only have a need to
backup a few hundred megabytes, once a year, then there's a good chance
you don't need something as fancy as a DAT drive.
Have you considered the 128MB Magneto-Opticals? Virtually indestructable
media, cheap, and they double as a slow hard drive too……
Good Luck!
Erik Flom
First,don't buy an extra drive or two and think you have a good data
backup system. You'll only have a partial protection backup system.
You will have protected yourself from the failure of one hard disk
and you may have protected yourself from most program and user
errors, but not all of them. You'll have covered most of the bases
but left yourself wide open on the rest.
You'll have no protection from fire, theft, floods and similar such
total system failures. A big power surge could blast the hard disks
along with the computer. Also if your computers power supply blowes
up it can easily take out the hard disks to. You'll also have to be
very carefull doing backups and restores because you'll only have
one (two?) backups. Remember that hard disks don't come with write
protect tabs. Also when you end up wanting more disk space you'll
need to stay at double the disk capacity or buy some sort of backup
system then.
You can get an IBM PC only tape drive cheaper because the interface to
a floppy controller is a bit simpler. But mostly because they can
sell zillions more tape drives to IBM PC folks compared to the market
for SCSI tape drives. So it comes down to being mostly an economy of
scale issue.
Hilary,
Call Moonlighter Software and ask ig they have any Archive Viper drives
left… or anything similar…. they were selling them for around $350
which included AmiBack 2.0. (That's the system I have)
That price is certainly more in line with what I am willing to pay.
Have you an address – phone number – FAX number of Moonlighter. Cannot seem to
find them in my curtrent Amiga magazines.
Thanks for your suggestion and help Michael.
Regards, Hilary.
Moonlighter Software Development, Inc.
3208-C E. Colonial Drive Suite 204
Orlando, FL 32803
407-384-9484 fax: 384-9391
Thanks for the address Michael. Will send them an enquiry by FAX.
Have a good – shooting free – Xmas.
Am now in process of upgrading my IBM clone from a 386 to a 486, so will be
"off the air" on CIS for a few days.
Hilary.
Hilary;
I would recommend that you set the tape's scsi id to 4 as that is the
"standard address" for the Ami. The BRUtab for example already has the
tape defined at that address. So do the configuration files of many
commercial, shareware and freeware tape handling programs.
On the machines that I have that have tape drives, I boot them both ways
(drive powered up or drive powered down). I almost NEVER have a tape just
sitting in the drive as that confounded "seek to load point" that the tape
drives do each time the machine reboots drives me nuts.
-bill
Hilary,
some straming tape backups will require that you disable SCSI disconnect.
But this will be called for if you notice lots of errors when trying to
back-up to tape or when trying to access another drive while the tape is
being accessed.
wmc – via Autopilot!
Hilary,
I've been using a Wangtek 5150ES for sometime now. First I used Tapestore That
was provided by GVP when I purchased the mechanism. Now I use AmiBack. Can't
say what the cost is these days for the drive, but the tapes can be had for
around $19-21 a piece, plus you can use 250MB tapes besides the 150MB ones.
Chris
Hillary,
There are tape backups for the Amiga, a CBM version (discontinued, I
believe) and the Touchdown 100 from Central coast are the most common. I
have recently upgraded to DAT, so my TD 100 and 23 tapes are available for
$600. Three or four tapes are still in the wrappers the others were used
only one to 3 times. They are all the 150 meg DC6150 variety although the
drive can handle the 250meg variety.
If you are intrested, let me know via EMail soon as I will be out of the
country and off-line from Dec 11 to Jan 12.
wmc – via Autopilot!
Hilary,
As the others have said, any SCSI tape drive should work. You cannot use
the tape drives that hook to a floppy or parallel ports unless they are
specifically made for the Amiga, but those types are usually slower anyway
so they are not a good idea.
You can pickup a copy of Computer Shopper to get the latest prices. From
my July copy one add listed 250 Mb tape drives for around $400 internal or
$500 external. Some DAT drives are listed as 2.0 Gb for $1050 and a 4.0
Gb for $1279. There were about 30 pages of ads with tape drives for sale
in this shopper and I just picked one ad at random so shop around for
better prices. You might pick a few tape drives that look good to you
price and size wise and then ask us another question about those brands.
Do consider how much you need to backup at one time before picking a tape
drive size. You'll do your backups more often if everything fits on one
tape. Also the cost of tapes is not trivial. The 250 Mb tapes run about
$20 each and DAT tapes cost about $10-15 each but hold much more.
You also need more than one backup tape to be safe. I speak from
experience when I say that it's no fun to find out during a backup that
your hard disk has become corrupted. Luckly I had a good backup plan that
included a good quantity of tapes so my data was safe.
//
\X/ Amiga or bust! Gary Bonnstetter, Bonnsoft