OT: SLR 5 Tape drive vs DAT

[Joe Chasan]

On Wed, Feb 02, 2005 at 09:43:58AM -0500, Scott Walker wrote:
> One of my customers has an old QIC tape drive that has finally died.
> 
> I told him to get a quote on a DAT drive to replace it.
> 
> The hardware guy quoted him a Tandberg SLR 5 Tape Drive for $610.
> 
> How does this compaire to a DAT drive.  This customer only has about 2gb
> that needs to be backed up.
> 
> What really got my curiosity up is the fact that they quoted hime $50
> each for the SLR 5 Data Cartridges.  What makes them so expensive?

i'm sure bill vermillion or tom podnar will pick up on this thread with
some more in-depth knowledge.

the main advantage of the SLR5 in your case would be the ability to
read/re-use the QIC tapes you already have.

the DAT media may go under $12 at buy.com, whereas the SLR5 media is
three times that (which is still a little cheaper than your source).

the SLR5 is a 4/8 GB tape, price for that size drive is about on par
with a DDS-3 12/24 GB DAT drive - i don't have specs in front of me,
but I'd guess the dds-3 should be much faster than the SLR5 (and 
certainly dds-4 20/40 GB DAT and the dds-5 36/72 GB).  you can see 
where you'd get more bang for the buck.  

I'm sure the QIC market share has been significanty eroded which may
account for the media price.  Also, i'm not sure there are any other
QIC/SLR drive vendors still making drives anymore other than Tandberg,
whereas the DAT market has HP/IBM/Certance/Sony to name a few.

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-Joe Chasan-                      Magnatech Business Systems, Inc.
joe at magnatechonline.com           Hicksville, NY - USA
http://www.MagnatechOnline.com    Tel.(516) 931-4444/Fax.(516) 931-1264