In December of 2001, when we evaluated the two technologies, I got a 
load of FUD from the LTO camp, and almost nothing from the SDLT side.  I 
even called Quantum directly, explained that we were on the verge of 
comitting to a technology, and I needed evidence to refute these claims, 
and nobody ever called me back.  Too bad for them!

I ran DLT-4 successfully for a number of years, and my experience was 
very favorable.  I managed to replace all fourteen drives in our ATL 
libraries, but it was eventually blamed on a firmware bug which would 
cause the drive to swallow the leader.  I figured SDLT was the next 
logical step, and since my current company was all AIT, we were looking 
at a forklift upgrade no matter which direction we would choose.  

The marketing hype I saw on LTO is partly hype.  The drives are not 100% 
compatable, and you must by cleaning media that is specific to the 
manufacturer of the drive.  I heard stories of certain brands of media 
not being compatable with some drives, but never experienced this 
personally.  We have IBM drives, which have been stellar performers, and 
rarely have problems.  There is a single digit error code light on the 
front, which is helpful to diagnose problems.  Anyone who has spent time 
running tapes can identify the common bugs without too much trouble.  We 
get good speeds, and the access time is as advertised.  Since we've 
comitted to buying LTO and abandoning our old AIT-2 technology, we don't 
see the backwards read issues.  When we are faced with the next major 
upgrade, I'm sure we will struggle with the LTO-2 or LTO-3 decision.  I 
believe after a number of years, we'll have to abandon LTO-1 and move 
onto the next greatest technology.  Hopefully our ADIC library will be 
able to accept the new formats.

With compression, I can easily see between 170G and 270G on a tape.  I'm 
sure the SDLT, with it's extra capacity, will allow for more bits.

-Jon

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