My impression is avoid OnStream, but others may know more

Post #21,098 by tonytib 12/11/01 8:58:01 PM Reply	My impression is avoid OnStream, but others may know more Barry R really liked Ecrix, although he's moved on the bigger things (AIT IIRC). And, I recall hearing bad things about OnStream, but don't remember the details. Tony
Post #21,125 by static 12/12/01 12:38:43 AM Reply	AIT is really expensive. Or it was last time I looked. I might look again. Wade. "All around me are nothing but fakes Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"
Post #21,604 by broomberg 12/15/01 7:43:38 PM Reply	OT: No good info, only responding > Barry R really liked Ecrix, although > he's moved on the bigger things (AIT IIRC). Acck, my ears are burning. Here's my progression: QIC - not consumer, no matter what anyone says, just old. In those days, the only competition other than mainframe 9 track and 3480 was Exabyte, which had a horrible history. DAT - 2GB. When I had 3x600MB o'disk it was fine. Original DLT in a 7 slot autochanger. Fast if you could feed it, HORRIBLE if you could not. DAT 4/8 GB (I think). Just because I needed to read one. Original Exabyte, to read from an RS6000. DUAL AIT in specialized enclosure with compression card. Cost me $22K for 2, ie: 4 drives. Was to backup 300GB. Too pricey, but big and fast. Then I did a little dance with ECRIXs. Bought about a dozen of them. Sprinkled them like fairy dust. Too slow, though, for any backup > 100GB, and when I do one'off backups by hand, for panic, way too slow. 3-6MB per second. Restore time was pretty bad too. Very cheap for the capacity, though. Now I'm in love with Exabyte Mammoth M2 in EZ17 robotic enclosure, 7 tapes. $6K for the box. Backup runs between 10 - 25MB per second, depending on compressability. Each tape holds about 70GB already compressed data, 100-200GB raw data. Restore runs at about 15-30MB per second and that is what REALLY counts when you are sweating. I currently have 8 of them.
Post #21,605 by tonytib 12/15/01 9:42:23 PM Reply	BTW, did you see that Exabyte bought Ecrix? At work, we're using DAT-3, but are getting close to its limits. So I did some quick research to see what the options cost, and found out the Exabyte had done some buying. $6K is too much for us; realistic max cost will be $2K (and $1.5K is better). I didn't find any loaders in that price range, but did find DDS-4, Exabyte Ecrix, AIT, and DLT drives. However, any new purchase is probably six months away. Tony
Post #21,610 by Andrew Grygus 12/15/01 11:11:16 PM Reply	So, the question now is: Did they buy it to kill it - or did they buy it to sell the product. More often than not, purchases by an "established name" are to kill a threatening technology. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]
Post #21,613 by tonytib 12/15/01 11:48:04 PM Reply	Well, Exabyte has already added Ecrix products to their site so it looks like they will be keeping the produts; I hope they don't kill them. If the Ecrix's slower speed isn't a problem, they definitely have a great price (well under $1,000) for the storage (33G uncompressed), plus I like the fact that it's not a helican scan tape (like VHS or DDS). To me it appears that the Ecrix products fill a different niche than Exabytes. Companies buying other companies just to kill them (e.g. Mathworks recently did this) or suck the customer base dry (e.g. CA) really ticks me off. /end of sermon Tony

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