On Thursday, November 06, 1997 6:29 PM, rtodd@argonet.co.uk wrote:
> Has anyone got suggestions of a suitable backup device to plug onto a
RiscBSD
> server with an Acorn scsi card fitted? Its for a school running a NC pilot
> scheme for Xemplar. They suggested a syquest but school cannot get devices
to
> talk. Anyone with a better idea?

By far the best backup device I know of is the Fujitsu DynaMO drive (I
believe other people are now producing them as well). It is a reasonably
fast (2MB/s) SCSI drive which fits into a standard 3.5" bay.

It takes very cheap, very large disks. I don't think RiscBSD can handle
640MB MOs yet as they use 2k sectors (although I am currently using a
build which is almost a year old!). But that still leaves the 230MB
disks (at under ?8 each) and 540MB disks (at under ?23 each).

Being an optical medium, the disks are completely immune to electrical
and magnetic damage. They are also fairly tough (the theory is that you
can stick one in a washing machine and it will still work once dry,
although I haven't tested this yet!). Not only that but the standard
guarantee is 50 years data retention.

In all, they are the perfect backup medium. Significantly larger,
cheaper (after about the tenth disk) and faster than Zips and a damn
sight more reliable than Jaz drives, SyQuests and even hard-drives. 

The drive itself is currently ?305 including vat from SMC (a friend got
one two weeks ago so the price is current). They are more expensive than
other backup drives but the cost of the disks soon out ways the initial
expense.

Finally, unlike certain other drives, the MO is a standard SCSI I or II
device so it is simply a matter of plug it in and use it.

I have had one for two years and I find it invaluable as both a backup
device and as a straight forward removable drive.


John Harrison
R&D, 3Dlabs