OT: SLR 5 Tape drive vs DAT

[Bill Vermillion]

As Bill Akers was scratching "For a good prime call 
391581 * 2^216193 -1" on the wall, he suddenly said:

> Kenneth Brody wrote:
> >Quoting Scott Walker <scottw1 at alltel.net>:
> >

> >>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.
> >
> >[...]

> >Nowadays, is there any inherent advantage of using tapes when
> >DVD writers and media are getting so inexpensive?

> There is the advantage of having media large enough to store   
> all files in one pass. And even if you span the DVD's there    
> is the cost of someone's time to attend to the DVD writer      
> and change the media. And there is the time to erase the DVD   
> manually if you are using RW media.                            

Part of that will depend on your SW - sometimes you can just
overwrite.   And with +RW media the quick erase is typically only
about 10 seconds while the -RW media can take well over a minute.

The simpler design of +R/RW means cheaper manufacturing and
manipulation than the original -R/RW.  Erase time in the +RW arena
isn't a big factor IMO.

I'm just finishing going through the second case of DVD cases
[totall of 200] converting 20 years worth of video into a DVD
format - so I've gotten more than familiar with this - going
through at least 4 disk per day.

> Tapes generally run unattended with about a total of less than 5 
> minutes a day to change our and store the tape for two servers, 1 
> Windows and 1 Unix. This is thousands of dollars difference in a year 
> alone, without considering the life of the server.

And that is something too many people forget to factor in.  The
total cost over a year.  I spec'ed one machine for an exec at a
client site - as they were typically buying the bottom line
machines - and though the one I spec'd was about $400 more it was
that much faster - and know what the person was doing - that
machine would actually save them money in a years time as I was
seeing a minimum of 30 minutes lost time per day on the slower
machine.   That's 2.5 hours week or 125 hours per year.

Looking at the all the overhead of an employee, the taxes,
insurance, etc added onto the basic wage that is easily $2000 -
$3000 year wasted.

I know how that is as one place I worked part-time gave me an
office to work in and one of the slowest machines.  I figured
out the time I spent wating was costing them and addition
$50 - $75 per week - and I HATE waiting on machines.

-- 
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com