Hi, all.

I'm looking into what choices folks have made for their tape drives,
and why they picked what they did.  I'm really happy with what I've
got, but I figure that state is perpetuated by questioning it, rather
than settling in.


I'm running 3590s (on the way out) and 3592s.  The capacity is close
to the top per-cartridge (500G raw per cart), and the speed is quite
good, ~80GB/s.

When we added the 1-gen 3592s a few years ago, seek speed was an
important difference between that and the then current LTO2; I
understand that LTO3 has made up some ground there but not all the
way.

My drives are getting a duty cycle approaching 100%; there are very
few times of the day I don't have jobs waiting in line for them.  My
SE is kind of nervous about them; he says we're mean to them. :)

I am given to understand that this kind of treatment tears LTO3s
apart; they aren't designed for that kind of 24x7 usage.

In a nutshell, I love my 3592s, I run them constantly and have
essentially no maintenance issues with them.  I've got some of them in
a remote installation ~300 miles away, and run them with confidence,
so far borne out. (8 months of production)



So, any opinions?  Love stories for LTO3 or that sun whatever-1000 ?
Hate stories?



- Allen S. Rout