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I was the UNIX Product Manager at Archive Corp (Prior to the Conner/Seagate
mess) and we performed extensive tests of tape media for compatibility
certification, including retentivity, flaking and length consistancy. Based
on the results of the tests, we selected the best of these certified
manufacturers' products to private label as our own media. Here is the
order in which we selected vendors up through 1995 (when I lost contact
with the ATI group):
- QIC
- 3M (now known as Imation)
- QMaxell/Sony (tie)
- (BTW - Iomega uses Sony private-labelled media)
- 4MM
- Fuji
- Maxell/Sony (tie - is this a trend?)
- 8MM
- Fuji/Exabyte - which we believed to be OEM'd Fuji (tie - so much for trend!)
- Sony
- Maxell
- DLT
- Maxell
- Sony
Otherwise, we had entries in our search from other vendors which were
generally a private-labelled version of one of the major labels above. The
exceptions were Verbatim and DIC. Both of these manufacturer's media had
fall-out rates and length discrepancies that were so high that we would not
certify them and even warned customers about them indicating that we could
not offer any sort of guarantee that they would get a good backup using the
media from these manufacturers.
In addition, since coming to EST, I've found that Verbatim media is still
not worth the money saved in purchasing it. We have 11 of their TR-Extra
and QIC-Extra (QICXL) tapes that were useless after fewer than 20 passes each.
While this is my personal opinion, it is based on over 9 years of experience
with this very question, I strongly recommend Imation/3M media for QIC/Travan
user, Fuji media 4MM users, Exabyte/Fuji for 8MM and DEC labelled media
for DLT users.
<answer from Tim Jones>
If you wish to help developing Ftape, or add some utility
(e.g. a tape formatting program), you will need that appropriate QIC
standards. The standard(s) to get is: QIC-80, -117, -3010, and 3020.
QIC-117 describes how commands are sent to the tape drive (including
timing etc), so you would probably never need it. QIC-80/3010/3020
describes higher level part, such as tape layout, ECC code, standard
filesystem. You can get the QIC standards from the following address:
Quarter Inch Cartridge Drive Standards, Inc.
311 East Carrillo Street
Santa Barbara, California 93101
Phone: (805) 963-3853
Fax: (805) 962-1541
Note: They are registered as `Freeman Associates, Inc' in the phone
book.
<from the Ftape-Howto>
Yes, if you are using version ftape-3.x or later of the Ftape
drivers from the
Ftape Home Page or from
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/kernel/tapes.
<answer from Tim Jones>
As the Ditto 2GB is a Tr-3 tape (though it can only store 1GB instead of the
1.6GB you get with a regular Tr-3 drive) you need an FDC (FDC means: Floppy
Disk Controller) that is capable of at 1Mbit/sec transfer rate. You don't need
to worry about this if you have an accellerator card (i.e. the Ditto Dash
controller). Otherwise try to purchase an FDC that claims to be capable of
driving 2.88Mb floppies because this implies that the FDC is capable of 1Mbit
transfer rate.
Ftape prints the maximum data rate of the FDC to the kernel log
files like this:
ftape-ctl.c (ftape_init_drive) - Highest FDC supported data rate: 500 Kbps.
<answer from Claus Heine>
Yes, if you are using version ftape-4.02 or later of the
Ftape drivers from the
Ftape Home Page or from
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/kernel/tapes.
<answer from Claus Heine>
Yes. But if you want to use the 5GB (10GB with compression) cartridges
you don't need it. With ftape there doesn't seem to be any
difference between the Ditto Max and the Ditto Max Pro .
<answer from Claus Heine>
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