Quantum ATL Valueloader DLT VS80

This sleek DLT tape backup device can take up to eight cartridges

Monday, June 02, 2003

A common problem with using single cartridge tape drives is that you have to manually insert or remove the cartridges. This can become a problem as your data backup requirements grow. That’s where a drive like this DLT tape autoloader from Quantum comes in. It is an external box having one drive and slots for holding up to eight cartridges. These cartridges revolve in a carousel around the drive and mount individually into it. You can use it in various configurations. For instance, you can use seven slots for each day of the week, and the eighth for cleaning tape or additional capacity.

The device uses DLT Tape IV cartridges, which have a capacity of 40 GB uncompressed or 80 GB compressed data, meaning a total capacity of 640 GB. Its average data transfer rate is 3/6 MB/sec uncompressed/compressed. At this speed you can backup 21 GB of compressed data in an hour. These transfer rates and storage capacity makes it an entry-level backup device that’s suitable for small to medium organizations. Generally backups are done at night or during weekends, when there is less activity on the network. At 21 GB/hour, you can backup about 200 GB in 10 hours at night. Backing up 640 GB will take more than 30 hours, which can only be done at weekends.

S     N   A   P   S   H   O   T Price : Quantum ATL Valueloader: Rs 325, 000 (one-year warranty); DLT tape: Rs 2,800 Meant for : SMEs Pros : Sleek design for rack installations, easy to use controls Cons : drivers didn’t work with Windows 2000 Server, so you cannot use the windows backup utility. Contact : Quantum Corporation, Bangalore. Tel : 3532610. E-mail : sunny.john@quantum.com

We first used the drive with the Windows Server 2003 backup tool and got a transfer rate of 2.8 MB/sec for uncompressed data, which is very close to its rated speed. The autoloader has a 68-pin Wide Ultra SCSI-2 (LVD) interface, but may also be attached to a Wide Ultra SCSI-2 (SE) interface. It operates as a single SCSI device but has two separate components inside—the tape drive and the autoloader robotics. Separate drivers are required for both. With Win 2000 server, there were problems installing drivers for the tape drive part, but the autoloader drivers installed successfully. So you can’t use it with the default Win 2000 backup software. We then tried it with third party backup software, namely BrightStor ARCserve Backup, and it worked fine. Win NT Server’s back up utility does not support autoloaders, so you need third party software. 

The Bottom Line At Rs 325,000 the drive offers high storage capacity, but its transfer rates are a little slow for doing large backups. This could mean that you have to restrict large backups for weekends.

Anoop Mangla

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