I may be biased but I don't see much advantage to LTO.  This comes from
a fair amount of investigation 2 years ago when SDLT and LTO were still
infants.

Here's my reasoning:

When LTO was first announced it was supposed to be a collaboration
between several large vendors; Seagate, HP, and IBM.  By the time it
came to market it was fragmented into 3 different formats, so much the
"O" in LTO.  The drives weren't compatible with each other (one
manufacturer's drive bay was just a tich lower than another's, making a
universal robotic arm useless).  Even after Seagate left the market HP
and IBM are still at odds.  You can't mix the 2 drives in a single
library.

I had seriously considered AIT as well, and actually have occasional
pangs of regret for not having gone that route.  But that's another
story, on to SDLT.

DLT has a long history and decent track record.  SDLT is made by the
same people who brought you DLT, so they've got an advantage out of the
gate.  Also, all the DLT media you may have is not lost, nor do you have
to keep older drives around to read that media if necessary.  But the
cherry on top for SDLT for me was research funding.  As I understand it,
Quantum/ATL gets royalties from every sale of DLT media (and I assume
SDLT now but I don't know for sure).  A large portion of that goes to
research, something the other players can't compete with.

Of course they seem to have done a fair job so far.  In any case, I
think LTO is a mistake for most situations.  As to SDLT vs. AIT, that's
a much closer debate.

~JK

-----Original Message-----
From: Douglas Ritschel [mailto:dritschel62 AT yahoo DOT com] 
Sent: Tuesday, December 10, 2002 7:30 AM
To: veritas-ng
Subject: [Veritas-bu] SDLT vs LTO Ultrium

What are the advantages and disadvantages of getting
LTO Ultrium drives rather than SDLT drives? 

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