We have always run IBM drives, and have never 'planned' for extra drives
to allow for drive failure. I have just upgraded from 10 to 16 drives in
the library, but that's a capacity and D/R issue. So far, I've had *one*
LTO-2 drive fail such that it needed replacement in just under two years
of use. We replaced, IIRC, two LTO-1 drives for not unloading/ejecting
tapes before IBM released a microcode upgrade that corrected the problem
-- and that was early in the lifespan of the LTO-1.

The biggest item to remember about LTO is that these are streaming tape
drives; if your system can not provide the data fast enough to keep the
tape in motion they have to stop, back up, and come up to speed again.
They aren't designed for that -- the 3592 drives are. That is the
biggest reason for the price differential.

Tom Kauffman
NIBCO, Inc

-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf Of
Paul Zarnowski
Sent: Monday, August 07, 2006 4:34 PM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: Re: FW: Tape Drive Choices: What, and why?

At 12:34 PM 8/4/2006, Prather, Wanda wrote:
>1) When LTO drives fail, they don't get repaired.  The CE just comes in
>and replaces them.  They are essentially "BIC" drives - plastic parts,
>no refills.

My understanding was that the IBM drives were more robust, because
they used no plastic parts.  I've not seen that in writing
anywhere.  They are more expensive, but IMHO worth the extra $ over
the HP drives.

When reading/commenting on LTO drives, be aware of which vendor's
drives your talking about.  They aren't all equal.  The LTO spec says
that a tape written on one vendor's drive should be readable on
another vendor's drive, not that they are manufactured the same.



--
Paul Zarnowski                            Ph: 607-255-4757
Manager, Storage Services                 Fx: 607-255-8521
719 Rhodes Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853-3801    Em: psz1 AT cornell DOT edu
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