Martina,
  I'm surprised to hear you are having 'lots' of hardware problems with 3590
drives. Do you have a maintenance agreement and have you called support when
you are experiencing problems?  You should!
  We have a 3494 library with 6 3590-E1A drives in it. These drives are
work-horses. We have had two service calls this year. But, you must remember
we are backing up 2700+ nodes, are using 700+ extended length cartridges and
keep those drives moving data around the clock.
  As for performance, I have seen transfer rates of 70GB an hour. This is on
tape to tape copies of storage pools (You won't see that when migrating disk
to tape.).
  The bottom line is that the 3590 is industrial strength! But, I must admit
having no experience with the B drive.

John G. Talafous              IS Technical Principal
The Timken Company            Global Software Support
P.O. Box 6927                 Data Management
1835 Dueber Ave. S.W.         Phone: (330)-471-3390
Canton, Ohio USA  44706-0927  Fax  : (330)-471-4034
talafous AT timken DOT com           http://www.timken.com


-----Original Message-----
From: Martina Sawatzki [mailto:msa AT OERAG DOT DE]
Sent: Tuesday, November 19, 2002 5:50 AM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: 3590 Tape Drives


Hi,

We are working with a 3494 IBM silo with 4  drives - 3590 type B -  which
is connected to a RS/6000. As we are having lots of  hardware problems with
these drives we think about changing them to 3590 drives type E.
Does anyone have experience with this type of tape drive ? I`m mainly
interested in a kind of comparison concerning performance and availibility
between the both types B -> E.

Thanks a lot
Martina


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