What happened to SCSI?

pgh13

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2 part question.....In the beginning there was Adaptec and it was expensive, then along came Advansys who produced a chipset which cut the price of SCSI controllers. We have a server with 3 DAT drives each hanging off a SIDE-2936UW controller. One tape drive repeatedly asks for the cleaning tape - like once every couple of days. That drive has been replace a couple of times but it is still the least reliable, so I thought replace the controller, but am back to only being able to find Adaptec. So, what happened to Advansys? Q2....any suggestions re the DAT drive?
TIA
 

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Why are you bothering backing up with DAT drives, hard drives internal and external are not expensive these days and are easier and faster to access in the event of a failure, why bother with another type of old technology. Even better use offsite backup, insurance companies prefer it I understand.
 

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As far as I know, SCSI has become very server-only hardware, I too haven't seen much in the way of new SCSI interfaces, mainly because SATA has become the latest thing and even IDE is vanishing slowly...

As for your DAT drive, have you tried replacing the SCSI cable? If the drive on the specific connector is the least reliable, then it could be a cable fault... :)
 

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Is the SCSI lead properly terminated? If there's no terminating resistor then signals can echo back from the endand interfere with good signals - possibly causing this error message.
 

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PaulR said:
Is the SCSI lead properly terminated? If there's no terminating resistor then signals can echo back from the endand interfere with good signals - possibly causing this error message.

Good suggestion but I cannot really see it........ one out of three not terminated?
 

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Perhaps they are all on the same cable and it's the last one before the end?
 

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Three controllers, three terminations. Already changed the lead; it is one of those ribbon cables that alternates twisted and straight sections and it looked as if it was unravelling
 

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Topper said:
Why are you bothering backing up with DAT drives, hard drives internal and external are not expensive these days and are easier and faster to access in the event of a failure, why bother with another type of old technology. Even better use offsite backup, insurance companies prefer it I understand.

Disk backup isn't much good if the building burns down. With these off-site backups, do they put in a high speed connection? It'll take a long time to back up 50GB over a 2M ADSL line
 

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The drive may have been replaced, but is the tape still OK ?

Do you store the tape anywhere where it may have been corrupted ?

Is the drive in question the one nearest the PC power supply ?

I have a PCI / SCSI adapter here if you need to experiment.

(edit - actually two - Adaptec 2940U and Tekram LST896/DC-390)
 

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pgh13 said:
Disk backup isn't much good if the building burns down.
Neither is a DAT backup if the building burns down

pgh13 said:
With these off-site backups, do they put in a high speed connection? It'll take a long time to back up 50GB over a 2M ADSL line

As I understand it the connection is your responsibility, I am surprised that any business is using 2MB ADSL these days.
 

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Topper said:
Neither is a DAT backup if the building burns down



As I understand it the connection is your responsibility, I am surprised that any business is using 2MB ADSL these days.

It's OK if the DAT tapes are taken off site.....I was using 2MB as an example, but business broadband is still expensive in UK
 

pgh13

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Channel Hopper said:
The drive may have been replaced, but is the tape still OK ?

Do you store the tape anywhere where it may have been corrupted ?

Is the drive in question the one nearest the PC power supply ?

I have a PCI / SCSI adapter here if you need to experiment.

(edit - actually two - Adaptec 2940U and Tekram LST896/DC-390)

We've had the problem with new tapes. The drives are in tower case, one above the other and the problem one is in the middle

Thanks for the offer of the adapter, but i think I can liberate one elsewhere
 
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