Need new removable storage drive: DVD or Tape?

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Originally Posted by DownBeachBreeze

if you only have one hard drive I suggest adding another high capacity hard drive set as a slave to your primary hard drive.
However, If you have two hard drives I don't think you can add even an external removable drive? Too many devices...

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I seem to be running around explaining stuff to you ;) .. Clickhere is (& I hope he won't take umbridge with the following remark ? ;) as I'm trying to explain to a 'newbie' ..) a man with his own agenda ! What you or I might suggest for him, isn't always what he decides is right for him - here I think he's 'sorted' already :)

On your comment about two hard drives though, generally most motherboards have two IDE channels (where the wires connect) & each channel (wire) can support 2 drives be they hard disk or cd/dvd - ATAPI devices is the 'ubber geek' phrase - so a total of 4 .. if you want more then a simple way is to add a PCI IDE controller card (roughly say $20) which can add (usually) another 4 devices (sometimes the really cheap ones are just single rather than dual channel).

I have two 80GB SATA drives in RAID 0 for speed.

And why couldnt I add an external drive? I could if I wanted too, what do you mean by too many devices? I already have 3 IDE drives, 2 SATA drives, and over 10 usb devices connected to my PC, and USB supports 127 devices at once I beleive so I can still add over a hundred external devices, over 200 actually because I have 2 USB controllers.

Anyway, I also had an OnStream 15/30 GB until I upgraded to my Sony AIT drive. The OnStream was extremely reliable but also extremely slow (1mb/sec) and only 15GB per tape meaning I would need 6 tapes for a single full backup, but if you have less than 15GB to backup the OnStream is an excellent drive, too bad they went bankrupt... twice.

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What you or I might suggest for him, isn't always what he decides is right for him - here I think he's 'sorted' already

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I am very happy with my decision, these AIT tapes are great, they are extremely small and hold an incrediable capacity for their size, I think some had suggested external hard drives, but that is more expensive per GB and more expensive in storage space (actually maybe not with high capacity drives).

I still only use the drive for backup because I still have my nCrapia chipset loaded with bugs, one of which prevents me to use my tapes with drive letter access properly to store/watch movies directly from tapes.

I can't wait to get rid of my first and last nCrapia product but I'm not saving and upgrading my mobo and cpu will cost me close to $1K because I want to go to 64bit with a good CPU that will last me a few years, I still have a 1700 and almost everything on my PC is instant thanks to my RAID 0, the only thing it's too slow for is HD video which is 6 times DVD quality (1920x1080), minimum requirements: 3ghz, but I'm sure an Athlon 2000+ would be fine as on mine it just barely lags, almost only the audio stutters (funny, I have a nCrapia sound chip, the sound lags, and an old ATI video card, and the video plays fine, my friend had one of the latest and more powerful nCrapia video cards and the video lagged even though my 3 year old ATI plays it fine).

Okay, I was wrong. I thought that you could not have more than two primary ide drives, but if you put in another card, sure. If you can attach multiple usb external hard drives why don't you do that? I have two more expansion slots I have not used. I do use the usb to expand and I do understand the usb capabilities but other that three printers, a scanner, joystick, and a webcam I don't have any other devices.
As far as the D130 adr Onsteam goes, I got a deal. I bought the first one for $60 and it fell apart. However, with the warranty I was able to get a new one. The price on the new one was over $220 and it works better so I guess they fixed it. It's the speed, capacity, and random file access that is the best part of the tape drive. Downside is they didn't make xp complient drivers.
A small tech store guy wanted me to consider a dvd/rw rewritable laser dirve for backup but not enough info has been gathered on these devices for me to consider them for backup. Cutting edge tech has it's drawbacks in that it takes time to see flaws in equipment gathered for review. However, you might look into it if you haven't already.

DownBeachBreeze

You can still have 4 IDE drives, or 2 SATAs and 4 IDEs on newer motherboards.

I dont need external drives nor do I have space for them, I have more than enough space in my internal drives and move my very large files that I dont access often on tapes which are cheaper and more reliable than hard drives, plus I need the tape drive anyway for daily backups.

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[...] and random file access that is the best part of the tape drive.

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Random access time is the worst spec of any tape drive, millions of times slower (literally) than any other drive type. A tape seek time could be 5-15 minutes on certain tape drives drives, most hard drives are less than 10 milliseconds, my tape drive has a maximum seek time of less than 1 minute which is very fast for a tape drive thanks to it's short tape lenght (754 feet or 230 meters) and very high data density.

Sorry, hit submit by mistake, I also wanted to add:

I wouldn't recommend a DVD writer for backup because:
-Optical discs are extremely unreliable and fragile compared to tape
-Ridiculously small capacity (9.4GB) not enough for most users
-Much slower write speed than most tape drives
-Not sure about this, but probably more expensive per GB than tapes
-DVD-RWs become less reliable after being re-written many times, most tape technologies can be re-written thousands and thousands of times, my Sony drive for example is rated at 30,000 re-writes, a DVD-RW would be lucky to get 100

So DVD-RW drives make a pretty poor backup solution, unless you're backing up small amounts of data that you don't mind loosing due to media failure, find another backup device.

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Originally Posted by ClickHere2Surf.com

You can still have 4 IDE drives, or 2 SATAs and 4 IDEs on newer motherboards..

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You can have as many as the manufacturer cares to build onto his board !

Generally recently most m/b's have a twin channel ide controller (so 4 devices as above) & sata equiped boards do at the moment generally have 2 sata ports, but there is no limit at all other than practicallity & cost & such ..

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..Not sure about this, but probably more expensive per GB than tapes ..

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Tricky call that one ;) - on your estimation of 100 uses probably - but I've got a rewriteable I've been expecting to 'break' for over 6 months now & I reckon that might be well over the 1000 re-writes 'claimed' {I wish I'd been diligent enough to keep track - I wonder if there's a way to figure it out from the medium ?} (by most manufacturers) - & 30,000 rewrites on a tape ? - where's that from ? Are you sure you don't mean the unit is rated to do that & not the tapes ?

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..Ridiculously small capacity (9.4GB) not enough for most users ..

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You are having a laugh right ? .. not you aren't ;) .. I know ! :) .. you are thinking of users like you ! ;) - 10 gb (to round it up) is a hell of a lot of information (information being processed data - video streams are raw data or they might be information - that depends how you look at it - the summary of 'gone with the wind' for instance is 'over-rated' :D making that information - but the raw data stream {ie. a copy of the film} depending on what compresson you use will be much longer - & are individual frames there data or information? - imho, they are data until one missing frame or sequence lacking to make the film make sense makes them information) - I can think of 'huge' firms (so multinational type places) who have entire & critical to them databases in much less space - but from your perspective working with lots of video files it is indeed 'insufficient' ..

Its all horses for courses ! ..- I use DVD as backup, as I watch a film once & thats it so I burn it 'just in case' & then for what other backups I want its 'tons' - how many excel spreadsheets for instance can you get on that ? - bloomin' loads ! is how many ;)

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Originally Posted by confus-ed

I seem to be running around explaining stuff to you ;) .. Clickhere is (& I hope he won't take umbridge with the following remark ? generally most motherboards have two IDE channels

You mean the primary is for the hard drives.

(where the wires connect) & each channel (wire) can support 2 drives be they hard disk or

The secondary is for the cd/dvd/tape.

cd/dvd - ATAPI devices is the 'ubber geek' phrase - so a total of 4 .. if you want more then a simple way is to add a PCI IDE controller card (roughly say $20) which can add (usually) another 4 devices (sometimes the really cheap ones are just single rather than dual channel).

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Question.
However, if a add a card for another hard drive plugged into your primary then
that card could not contain any secondary devices?

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Originally Posted by ClickHere2Surf.com

I can't wait to get rid of my first and last nCrapia product but I'm not saving and upgrading my mobo and cpu will cost me close to $1K because I want to go to 64bit with a good CPU that will last me a few years, I still have a 1700 and almost everything on my PC is instant thanks to my RAID 0, the only thing it's too slow for is HD video which is 6 times DVD quality (1920x1080), minimum requirements: 3ghz, but I'm sure an Athlon 2000+ would be fine as on mine it just barely lags, almost only the audio stutters (funny, I have a nCrapia sound chip, the sound lags, and an old ATI video card, and the video plays fine, my friend had one of the latest and more powerful nCrapia video cards and the video lagged even though my 3 year old ATI plays it fine).

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If your not happy with you vidio card look up the "GFORCE FX5600XT 128MB TV 8XAGP REM CTRL VIVO DVI". It scored best with "Toms Hardware Guide" online and cost less that $100".

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Originally Posted by DownBeachBreeze

Question.
However, if a add a card for another hard drive plugged into your primary then
that card could not contain any secondary devices?

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Can you have a look at what you wrote & re-quoted from me again ? - I can't follow quite what you are asking ..

I'll take a guess at what you meant in the meantime ;) ..

The add in PCI IDE cards I was talking about simply have another controller chip on them & one/two more connectors (nearly all controllers are dual channel but for cost reasons they might only have a single connector), but each of the connectors means another channel, which with IDE almost always means another primary & secondary available, as thats how IDE works (like scsi chaining only the maximum with ide is 2 & not 127)

So in answer to what you asked (it was the chopped up requote fooling me) - yes there's secondary devices on them as they work in principle exactly the same as any built in IDE controller on the motherboard.

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Originally Posted by DownBeachBreeze

If your not happy with you vidio card look up the "GFORCE FX5600XT 128MB TV 8XAGP REM CTRL VIVO DVI". It scored best with "Toms Hardware Guide" online and cost less that $100".

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I hope this is a joke, I will NEVER, EVER EVER EVER get an nVidia product again, they are LOADED with SERIOUS bugs that cause system crashes, blue screens, prevent the PC from booting up, and then if your computer actually works after installing the nCrapia product, the product itself won't work properly if at all. Then they'll release driver updates you'll always think will solve the problems but they always make them worst, I know, I've hoped their last 5 updates would make it better, I kept thinking, I know the last one made it worst, but they've got to have got it right this time, but even after the 5th update they released the problems just kept getting wrost, now when there's a new update, I wont even consider it for a second, I've learnt my lesson: nVidia driver updates = new added bugs to make your computer as unstable as possible.

Not to mention the ATI cards are MUCH faster and more powerfull than even the best (or least worst) nCrapia. It's plain impossible that that card would have won the best score unless that was a few years ago, because that's not a fraction of what today's cards can do.

Plus anyway I need a card with a TV tuner because as I said my PC is my TV and VCR, and ATI also rules for TV tuners.

I'm also pretty sure jsut upgrading my CPU and sound chip will be enough to make those videos play properly, even though my video card is over 3 years old, it still does everything I need and my only replacement option would be at least $400 US for a good card with a tv tuner.

The 30,000 re writes (or at least uses, I assume they mean re-writes) is from:
http://www.storagebysony.com/reselle..._xref_ait1.pdf

CHTSdotcom,.. have you considered using a "VCR" (video cassette recorder) to archive your tv shows? It is a tape, compressed, inexpensive and fast all rolled into one. :eek:

Yea I used that before I got my ATI card, it is a real nightmare, have you ever tried finding a TV show on one of 50 tapes? It can literally take days or weeks of playing each back until you find it. Not to mention they use A TON OF SPACE, those old black boxes (tapes) are huge, the quality is terrible, only 2 hours per tape on a barely acceptable quality, and just a total pain to use.

I dont know if you still use these antiques for recording but if you try an ATI all in wonder card you will NEVER return to those big low quality low capacity tapes.

What used to take days or weeks to find a specific show is now instant by simply typing the name of scrolling through my list of recordings, and then instantly starts playing, no more FF'ing or REW'ing forever.

Not to mention to record a show i simply use the up/down/left/right on the ATI remote to navigate through channels (up/down) and times/dates (left/right), once I find what I want to record I press Record once for record the show, twice to record daily, 3 times for weekly, 4 times for every sunday (where sunday is the current day), 5 times to delete the recording, I can also do the same with the play button to automatically start the TV but without recording.

Wow, I just noticed you used "fast" to qualify tapes, what's fast about them? How fast the quality degrades? Or how fast they piss you off so much you never want to use a VCR again?

Anyway, I'm sorry if you're still living with such hard to use and poorly designed recording devices (of course one or two decade ago it was the only choice or almost), but since at least 7 years there have been good recording solutions for PCs and there are now stand alone ones that use a built in and/or removable hard drive.

My friend had recently asked me to record a TV show on those old black tapes, it literally took me 15 minutes to figure out howmy VCR worked, I hadnt touched it in 7-8 years (when I got my first ATI tuner card), and when I finally got it working, I was discusted by the absolutely unwatchable quality of the recording comapred to what I record on my PC (I must say this was on the lowest quality, EP SP or whatever they call those things), but it was really a terrible quality, but this might also be due to the fact my VCR has been collecting dust for the past 8 years, it makes a great monitor stand, which is hinestly the only reason I keep it, if my monitor had came with a stand the VCR would be in the trash where it belongs.

Oh, and the ATI card with my tape drive allows me to store 70 hours of VERY high qualtiy video on a tape that is 10 times smaller than a video tape, this means I can store 700 hours of better than a tape's best quality in the same storage space a video tape could only hold 2 hours of not even comparable quality video, that's 350 times less storage space required per hour of video!

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Originally Posted by ClickHere2Surf.com

I hope this is a joke, I will NEVER, EVER EVER EVER get an nVidia product again, they are LOADED with SERIOUS bugs that cause system crashes, blue screens, prevent the PC from booting up, and then if your computer actually works after installing the nCrapia product, the product itself won't work properly if at all. .

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You can test each vidio card yourself or you can rely on some organization which has already done the testing for you. Just because a vidio card was produced that did not perform to your specs does it mean that all the products produced after are not worthy of consideration. It's not a joke. Your letting your emotions interfere with your logic. I went from an AGP card to an 8x AGP card, a new Asus 865p MB 800 fsb, 2.4 ghz Hyperthreading Processor 400 fsb. This match of MB FSB and Processor FSB is the perfect pipeline of a data channel. They have finally solved the data bottleneck problem. These compontents were reviewed before I bought them. However, I also bought bad products which recieved favorable review. The RDRAM would overheat on my previous Micron MB and burned circuits. It was highly rated.
The tape drive was not rated. The Onstream D130 ADR tape drive had bad hardware but the replacement under warranty was fixed. I believed that the ramdom file access and the tape capacity was the asset which could not be duplicated under traditional tape drives and I also believed that DVD/RW drives would have a problem with rewrites and speed. No data was produced on these products so I would not risk a buy and findout option. I bought a laser printer that recieved reviews from "Toms Hardware Guide" for less than $200 by Samsung to replace my HP laser which finally fell apart after 8 years.
As a matter of fact I found this website a couple of weeks ago looking for a product, "USB to DB15" convertor, in a search the person, "drivers", was having the same problem I was having last May. I'm having problems making it work now. However, I did not spend a lot of money on it and I have will start a search for solutions as I am probably not the first one since there are many others who have bought the product.
However, "Tom's Hardware Guide" did produce an article this year that showed that the circuit boards that they tested were not the same as boards for sale to the general public. In mass production the boards were shown to have less circuits that ones sent for review. The article showed that as long as the board still stayed within a couple of percentage points of performance then it was an acceptable production alternation. This is the trouble with cutting edge technology and cooking the production line to make profits in a capitalistic socitey.

DownBeachBreeze